According to a report from Cointelegraph, Elon Musk’s social media investment, X (formerly known as Twitter), is worth less than half of what it was purchased for in October 2022, an internal memo has reportedly disclosed.
According to an October 30th report from Bloomberg, an internal memo and sources knowledgeable on the matter stated that restricted stock units recently paid to company staff were valued at $45 a share, which places the value of X at approximately $19 billion, which is less than half of the $44 billion paid by Musk to acquire the company in October of 2022.
Musk’s takeover of the social media platform has had several significant controversial moments, from rebranding the platform to X, restructuring its content rules, and laying off approximately 80% of the company’s staff.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, X’s daily active user count has fallen by nearly 20% since Elon’s takeover.
Musk’s radical changes, along with his candid voice on the platform, also appear to have negatively shifted his company’s favor with advertisers, with Musk stating in July that X had lost roughly half of its total advertising revenue.
The significant decline in revenue has made the servicing of Musk’s debt concerning for the firm as a whole. At the time of publication, X reportedly owes nearly $1.2 billion in interest payments on roughly $13 billion in total debt.
Musk has made it known that he would like to place more emphasis on paid user subscriptions, but as of this moment, less than 1% of the X’s total user base has decided to pay for a premium subscription, which equals less than $120 million in annual revenue.
On a brighter note, there have been welcomed and appreciated aspects of Musk’s ownership of the company.
One of the appreciated additions to the platform under Musk has been compensating individual creators for their engagement by way of revenue-sharing payments.
Recently, Musk announced that any posts corrected by the Community Notes feature would become “ineligible for revenue share” — in aims to prioritize accurate information versus sensationally viral and potentially flawed content.
Musk has stated on numerous occasions that he means to turn X into an “everything app” — greatly inspired by the super apps well known in Asia such as WeChat — which would see the social media platform grow to incorporate a range of financial services, video calls and other lifestyle use cases.
There are also hopes that X will integrate cryptocurrency in the future.
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