Investment giant Fidelity has again downgraded its estimated valuation of Elon Musk's X — formerly Twitter.
Musk purchased the social media platform in 2022 for $44 billion thanks in part to funding provided by Fidelity. But according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fidelity now believes the company is worth 71.5% less than it was at the time Musk bought it.
This isn't the first time the investment firm has slashed the value of its X shares in recent months. In November, Fidelity estimated that the value of its shares were down by about 10.7%, dropping by about $700,000 over a one-month period.
However, X is a privately held company, which means Fidelity has little — if any — insight into the business's financial performance and any valuations are merely projections based on the attitudes of investors. Other shareholders may have different opinions on the company's valuation.
Elon Musk had an expletive-laden message to advertisers leaving X
During an on-stage interview, Musk accused the companies who pulled their ads from the social media site of trying to "blackmail him."
Musk's X has faced some unsteady financial times in the months since he acquired it and quickly started implementing some — often controversial — changes.
Earlier last year, Musk hired American media executive Linda Yaccarino as CEO of the platform to oversee business operations. But she was immediately faced with the tough task of attracting more users and advertisers to a site that has fired much of its workforce, rolled back many of its content moderation policies and, in turn, raised advertisers' concerns about hateful speech on the platform negatively impacting their brands.
The platform then faced an advertising exodus last November over a report alleging that ads for companies like Disney, Apple and IBM were appearing alongside antisemitic posts. In response, Musk went on an expletive rant, telling advertisers to "go f***" themselves.
