SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk said in an email to company employees on Friday that Twitter is now worth about $20 billion, down from the $44 billion he paid for the social network in October. significantly decreased compared to .
The email, seen by The New York Times, was sent to employees announcing a new stock compensation plan. In it, Mr. Musk warned employees that Twitter remained in a precarious financial position and, at some point, was four months away from running out of money. He said the company must undergo “radical changes”, including mass layoffs and cost-cutting, to avoid bankruptcy and streamline operations.
“Twitter is rapidly reinventing itself,” Mr Musk wrote, adding that the company could be considered “a reverse startup”.
Twitter’s value has fallen as Musk has overhauled the company. In October, Mr. Musk took Twitter private, meaning it was no longer obligated to provide transparency about its finances. But the billionaire has publicly said the company has lost revenue since advertisers fled the platform after he took over, and has suggested that Twitter is in danger of going out of business.
The $20 billion figure values Twitter slightly more than Snapchat’s parent company Snap, which has recently struggled with a slump in its advertising business and expects its revenue to decline. Snap has a market cap of about $18 billion and about 375 million daily active users, compared with 237.8 million for Twitter in its final public disclosure before the company went private.
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and an email sent to Twitter’s communications department was returned with the poop emoji attached.The company’s new valuation was earlier determined by Information.
Twitter employees will receive stock in X Corporation, the holding company he used to buy the company, according to Mr. Musk’s email about the new stock compensation plan. These awards will be awarded based on a valuation of $20 billion. Mr. Musk also said in the email that he believed Twitter could one day be worth $250 billion.
Mr. Musk added that Twitter would plan to allow employees to sell stock every six months, similar to what his private rocket maker SpaceX does. The private stock sale would allow employees to own “liquid stock without the share price chaos and litigation burdens of a public company,” Mr. Musk wrote.
