X now valued at less than a third Musk paid for it

January 2, 2024 Siyabonga Mtangana

Elon Musk’s X is now worth less than a third of the price the billionaire paid for the former Twitter, according to Axios citing disclosures by Fidelity, which helped him complete the US$44-billion purchase.

Fidelity cut by a further 11% the value of its holding in X as of the end of November, the report said, citing the latest portfolio update for its Blue Chip Growth Fund. It extended a series of markdowns as the mutual fund firm gauged the value of the closely held ad-funded company that struggled to attract advertisers back in 2023.

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in late October 2022 was followed by a cascade of abrupt changes, from drastic layoffs and shutting of international offices to upending the platform’s moderation policies and verification system. The upheaval put off advertisers and 2023’s revenue from ad sales is estimated to come in at $2.5-billion, far below the prior rate of roughly $1-billion per quarter, Bloomberg News reported last month.

Read: SpaceX loan may have helped Musk buy Twitter

In November, Musk famously told advertisers that abandoned X over his endorsement of an antisemitic post that they can “f—” themselves. Earlier that month, Musk agreed with a post that said Jewish people held a “dialectical hatred” of white people. That message has since drawn criticism from the White House as well as several Tesla investors. Major corporate spenders, including Walt Disney Co and Apple, distanced themselves from the platform. — (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP