X / Twitter is now worth 70% less than what Elon Musk paid for it, says report

midian182

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Facepalm: No entrepreneur wants to see one of their investments lose over 70% of its value in just over a year, especially when they paid $44 billion for it. But that's the situation Elon Musk is facing with X / Twitter, which has been revalued by mutual fund firm Fidelity, one of the financial backers behind Musk's acquisition.

Fidelity was one of several investors that helped Musk raise the $44 billion to buy Twitter (as it still was then) last April. Axios writes that the company has cut the value of its holdings in X by a further 11% as of the end of November.

Fidelity's latest Blue Chip Growth Fund update shows it now believes Musk's company is worth 71.5% less than the $44 billion it was worth at the time of purchase. Fidelity's report suggests that X is now valued at between $12 billion and $13 billion.

The fall in value includes a 10.7% cut during November, the same month that Musk told advertisers who left X to "go f*ck yourselves" during an interview with the New York Times. The companies abandoned the platform following an investigation that showed their ads appearing next to pro-Nazi content posted by users. Musk singled out Disney boss Bob Iger specifically as the target of his anger and later removed the Disney+ app from Tesla vehicles.

Few could have imagined the sort of turmoil at Twitter that would follow Musk's acquisition. From firing thousands of employees, including large portions of the safety and moderation teams, to allowing previously banned users to return and changing the company name and logo, Musk's changes have spooked advertisers. The platform previously earned around $1 billion per quarter from ad sales, but 2023's entire ad revenue is estimated at $2.5 billion.

Musk's own actions haven't been helping assure advertisers, before launching his four-letter attack on ad partners and telling them he didn't even want them to return, the billionaire was heavily criticized for posting a positive reply to a message arguing that Jewish communities push hatred against whites. Musk later apologized for this post, calling it "perhaps one of the most foolish, if not the most foolish, thing I've ever done on the platform."

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Elon Musk's net worth as of 1/2/24 $251.3 Billion. So pocket change in the grand scheme of things 😅. Even Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg could not achieve this with their state sponsored platforms.
 
Twitter wasn't worth what he offered for it intially and it was worth even less when he was forced to pay the intial offer. It's probably only lost ~15% of what it was actually worth (and I'm being generous). Twitter's management had been hiding how much money the company was losing for years. The company's operating policies were hemorraging money with waste left and right and an excess of manpower.
 
Guys, its time for the DAILY MUST ARTICLE! Get your bingo cards ready!

Twitter was never worth that much to begin with. Much like reddit, facebook, and google, it was way overvalued for the revenue it brought in, and it was losing TONS of cash despite being popular.

And yet....the Lemon Musk genius bought it at full price and lost his mind, credibility and his shirt in the process!!

He's as good at losing money as his Orange friend......😅
 
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And yet....the Lemon Musk genius bought it at full price and lost his mind, credibility and his shirt in the process!!

He's as good as losing money as his Orange friend......😅
Yeah I also view cronies and politicians not losing money and making money in the process as trust worthy 😉. They more they make as a crony and politicians the more I trust them. 😎
 
I never really liked Twitter, I just open it from time to time to see/read tweets related to some articles I am reading. Now I don't even follow the links because twitter is mostly unviewable without an account, and I am not willing to register an account at this phase.
 
Musk recently told X advertisers to "go f*ck yourselves"
That's a bit of a misrepresentation. If I remember the context correctly, he told that to advertisers who wanted to "blackmail him with money" (e.g., tone-police him) to do that. The additional context is important as this is presumably a subset of all advertisers.

Personally, I think the addition of the "community-added context" feature has greatly improved the site overall. I still think the name change is silly, though.
 
Financial analysts suggest that X is worth ~70% less than the companies purchase price. That isn't the same as the companies actual worth. Right now there are vociferous analysts taking every opportunity to tell folks that they're certain the value of a company (that just so happens to feature in their paid for valuation model) is either significantly below or above the current market or near past market price. Effectively this is the equivalent of financial analyst click bait, they get some fearful or emotional folks to pay for their "research" and in the process they may materially deprecate a commodity they hold a short contract in.

We've all seen this play out across all of Musks enterprises for years, why wait for just the right wave to ride when you can generate your own surf. The opposite of this will be playing out with Tesla in the mid to long term as it finds its way into ever more mutual funds and gains untouchable status by c-suite decree.

 
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