Musk’s investment in Twitter is now worth $8.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which uses Fidelity’s valuation to calculate the worth of his holding. Musk spent more than $25 billion to acquire an estimated 79% stake in the company last year.
Twitter’ is now worth just one-third of what Elon Musk paid for the social-media platform, according to Fidelity, which recently marked down the value of its equity stake in the company.
Musk has acknowledged he overpaid for Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion, including $33.5 billion in equity.
Fidelity report on Twitter worth
In Fidelity’s latest Twitter markdown, the financial services giant estimated in a monthly report of portfolio valuations that the company is now worth about $15 billion, or 33% of the October purchase price, per a Bloomberg assessment.
Fidelity was among the group of outside investors that helped Musk finance the Twitter takeover and it has marked down the company’s value twice since then.
Fidelity’s Twitter stake, which now comes under Musk’s X Holdings, was valued at almost $6.55 million as of late April. Although Fidelity again marked down Twitter shares, it’s on a one-month lag.
Fidelity first reduced the value of its Twitter stake in November, to 44% of the purchase price. That was followed by further markdowns in December and February.
More recently, Elon Musk said Twitter is worth less than half of his purchased price. It’s unclear how Fidelity arrived at its new, lower valuation or whether it receives any non-public information from the company.
Musk’s Twitter Struggle
Twitter has struggled financially since Musk took over. After saddling the company with $13 billion of debt, Musk’s erratic decision making and challenges with content moderation led advertising revenue to decline by 50%. An attempt to recoup that revenue by selling Twitter Blue subscriptions has so far failed to take off. At the end of March, less than 1% of Twitter’s monthly users had signed up.
The latest markdown erases about $850 million from Musk’s $187 billion fortune, according to the index. Despite Twitter’s issues, Musk’s wealth is up more than $48 billion this year, largely due to a 63% surge in Tesla Inc.’s share price.
Thought bubble, via Axios’ Dan Primack: Although Fidelity again marked down Twitter shares, it’s on a one-month lag. The interesting question is what Fidelity does for the month of May, when Musk announced that Linda Yaccarino would be the platform’s new CEO. We won’t get those marks until the end of June.
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