Elon Musk has reported a pretty big loss in the worth of Twitter.
After buying the site for a whopping $44bn in October of 2022, just six months later, it’s lost more than $20bn in value, according to calculations based on a leaked memo from the billionaire.
The Chief Twit made the new estimation in a company-wide email he sent to remaining employees. This comes per the NYT, which says it got its hands on a copy.
In the internal memo, EM says Twitter is currently worth $20 billion … $24 billion less than his purchase price.
This loss might not come as a shock to most, however, as many advertisers have actually left the platform since Musk’s takeover.
The measure of Twitter’s worth was based on Musk’s offer of stock grants, according to Platformer and the Information, which first reported on the memo.
What are stock grants you ask? ”Stock grants are an opportunity to buy shares that cannot be sold until a set point in time, as opposed to stock options, which – depending on the conditions applied – can be more flexible. The aim is to encourage staff to reach a set valuation by a point in time so that they can sell their shares for cash.”
The stock grants could be “sold every six months, based on a third party valuation,” another separate internal email to Twitter staff said.
This also comes after Twitter HQ say a huge amount of layoffs in order to save money, with the headcount being cut from about 7,500 to about 2,000.
Musk reportedly referenced this in his memo, saying that the “radical changes” he imposed were necessary to save money.
It’s safe to say it’s been a turbulent 6 months for Twitter since Musk’s takeover. Who knows what’s in store for the future of the social media platform.
