Elon Musk bought X, then Twitter, in 2022 for $44 billion.
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Conway Gittens: Wall Street is in nervous mode Wednesday after geopolitical tensions and a potentially economically-damaging labor strike kept investors on edge. Meanwhile, Good news on the labor front went overlooked. Private hiring bounced-back more than expected in September, according to payroll company ADP. But on the corporate front, quarterly sales at Nike fell more than anticipated. Profits came in ahead of forecasts – but that was largely due to cost cutting.
In other news – Elon Musk’s purchase of X is turning into a very bad investment for the billionaire. Since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter, X’s value has plummeted roughly 80 percent to just $9.4 billion, based on estimates by the Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund. Musk paid $44 billion for the company in 2022.
That estimate is based on the shares Fidelity still owns. As of the end of August, it says its stake was worth only $4.2 million, which was a 24 percent drop from the month before …and way down from the $19.6 million perceived value at the time of Musk’s purchase.
Other estimates of X’s value are less dire – but not by much. Noted Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told CNN that X is probably worth about $15 billion, and was worth about $30 billion when Musk did the deal.
Analysts and marketing experts pin X’s diminishing market value on Musk himself. Since taking over, he’s scared away advertisers by allowing controversial content, misinformation, and unfounded conspiracy theories to proliferate the site.
But not all the news is bad, X said monthly active users rose 6 percent in the second quarter to 570 million monthly active users…and that’s still a lot of eyeballs for advertisers who are willing to pay up.
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