Elon Musk’s Twitter is now worth less than half of US$45 million

Highlights

• X, formerly known as Twitter, has now sunk to a low of US$19 billion from US$45 million.
• Musk’s controversial moves, including rebranding it to X, changing many of its content rules and laying off approximately 80% of the company’s workforce, have created negative sentiments.
• The drop in revenue is causing headaches for Musk and his team as it is believed that X owes US$1.2 billion in interest payments on its roughly $13 billion in total debt.

It hasn’t been a smooth few months for Elon Musk. The tech billionaire who had bought social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter)  for US$45 million has now sunk to a low of US$19 billion. According to the reports making rounds in the media, an internal memo revealed that the stock prices have dipped primarily due to the negative sentiments created in the market on the back of some of the controversial decisions taken by Musk.

Musk’s controversial moves since taking over the platform, including rebranding it to X, changing many of its content rules and laying off approximately 80% of the company’s workforce, have created negative sentiments. Not just that, in fact, X seems to be also losing confidence amongst the advertisers, resulting in losing at least half of its total advertising revenue.

Interest piling up

The drop in revenue is causing headaches for Musk and his team as it is believed that X owes US$1.2 billion in interest payments on its roughly $13 billion in total debt. Having said that, Musk turned his attention to acquiring more paid user subscriptions, which is less than 1% of the platform’s user base.

Elon Musk’s Twitter stock value has now halved. Image Credit: Mizter_X94/Pixabay

Ever since Elon Musk took over the company, the billionaire has been harping on his vision of making X an all-in-one app. For this, he had announced that any posts corrected by the Community Notes feature would become “ineligible for revenue share” — a move that seeks to prioritize accurate information over purely viral and potentially inaccurate content.

Changing fortunes of Musk’s X

It needs to be noted that ever since Elon Musk assumed control of X, most of the company’s staff has been laid off or have resigned. It is believed that Musk’s purchase added US$13 billion in debt, and his management decisions, including looser content-safety rules, led to a 60 per cent drop in sales. The Bloomberg report noted that X is also burdened with approximately US$1.2 billion in annual interest payments on its debt.

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