According to an internal email obtained by US news outlets, Twitter CEO Elon Musk estimates the company is currently worth $20 billion, which is less than half of the $44 billion he spent for the social media network just five months ago.
The communication to staff members discussed a new equity incentive plan for the San Francisco-based business and the distribution of shares to workers at X Holdings, the parent company of Twitter since Musk acquired it in late October.
The platform is valued at $20 billion according to the compensation plan, which is just a little bit more than either Pinterest ($18.7 billion) or Snapchat’s parent firm Snap ($18.2 billion), both of which, unlike Twitter, are publicly listed.
Musk said that Twitter would allow its employees to cash in shares every six months.
A query from AFP emailed to Twitter’s communications department generated an automatic response in the form of a poop emoji.
In the internal email, Musk describes the brutal contraction in Twitter’s value. He says the platform faced such grave financial difficulties that at one point it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
“Twitter was trending to lose ~$3B/year,” Musk said in a message posted Saturday on the platform.
He cited a revenue drop of $1.5 billion a year and a debt-servicing burden of the same amount — leaving it with “only 4 months of money.”
