Rachel Lang
Elon Musk's Twitter purchase has cost him billions.
The social media platform now estimated to be worth less than half of what he paid for it last year.
The billionaire sent a company-wide email about employee stock grants last week, which was obtained by The New York Times.
In that email, Musk revealed to staff that the company's value has plummeted significantly since going private.
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He told staff the social media app had seen a loss of roughly $20 billion in value, as per his own estimates.
Musk purchased the 17-year-old social media platform in October for a whopping $44 billion.
In the months that followed, advertisers fled the platform in droves, Vox reported.
As per digital marketing analysis firm Pathmatics, as of February more than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers abandoned the social media site in the wake of Musk's takeover.
The data, shared with Vox, revealed Twitter had only retained six of its 10 top pre-acquisition advertisers.
In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that company’s revenue had plummeted by a whopping 40 percent.
And, as advertising is Twitter's main source of income, that means Musk is in some pretty hot water right now.
He also said in the email that Twitter is four months away from running out of capital.
This suggests the social media app may soon be verging on bankruptcy and could soon be no more unless they get a big financial injection.
The Chief Twit advised his remaining employees: "I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation."
He added that he now views Twitter as an 'inverse start-up'.
“Twitter is being reshaped rapidly,” Musk wrote.
He also unveiled his employee stock plan in the staff-wide email, advising his workers that even with the system Twitter was still in financially bad shape despite massive layoffs.
In the stock plan, employees will receive grants for the holding company used to buy Twitter.
Workers will be able to sell off their private stocks twice a year, which is a practice already used at Musk’s SpaceX.
As per The New York Times, Twitter’s new USD $20 billion valuation means the Blue Bird is now worth roughly the same amount as Snapchat.
Snapchat has seen users abandon their app in droves for TikTok in recent years.
That being said, Snapchat still manages to cop more than 100 million more daily users than Twitter on average.
Yikes.
UNILAD approached Twitter for comment but, instead of a media statement, received a poop emoji instead.