We’ve reached the one-year anniversary of Elon Musk’s $44 billion USD (around $60 billion CAD) purchase of X (formally Twitter). The company is reported to have dropped to a valuation of $19 billion USD (around $26.2 billion CAD).
Word comes by way of Fortune (seen by The Verge), which obtained internal documents earlier this week. X awarded its employees equity in the company this week. The equity was given a valuation of the aformentioned $19 billion, a significant drop in value.
It would appears as though following the 12 month tenure of Musk as owner, X’s value has dropped by a staggering 55 percent. The report goes on and affirms the documents read, “the fair market value per share is determined by the Board of Directors based on a number of factors in a manner that complies with applicable tax rules.”
Since owning X, Musk has made numerous changes to company policies as well as the platform. For employees, this means restructuring its compensation plan to be more akin to SpaceX. It’s said that while privately held, staff are able to regularly cash out a portion of shares to outside investors. X is offering its employees restricted stock options (RSUs). The RSUs are garnered over a spand of four years. From the grant date, the RSUs require a “liquidity event.” Whether its an IPO or the company is sold, the RSUs are required to be taxed as income.
This report is the first indication of what X is valued at since Musk purchased the company. Up until this point, employees were reported to have been unaware of how drastic of a drop X has seen since Musk first stepped in. Whether or not X will recover during the second year of Musk’s reign remains to be seen.
