Fidelity has marked down the value of its equity stake in Twitter, indicating that the social media platform is now worth only one-third of what Elon Musk paid for it.
In October of last year, Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion. He has since admitted that he paid too much for the micro-blogging platform. Recently, he revealed that the value of Twitter is now less than half of what he initially paid for it.
Fidelity was part of the investors that aided Musk in funding the Twitter acquisition. The investment firm’s monthly portfolio valuations show that Twitter is currently valued at $15 billion, which is 33% of its purchase price in October.
It is unclear how Fidelity came to its latest, reduced valuation or if it has access to any confidential information from the company.
Fidelity had initially lowered the value of its Twitter investment in November to 44% of the purchase price. Since then, there have been additional markdowns in December and February.
The investment, which now falls under Musk’s X Holdings, was valued at approximately $6.55 million in late April.
Since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has faced financial struggles. Musk’s decision-making style and difficulties with content moderation led to a 50% decline in advertising revenue after he burdened the company with $13 billion of debt.
Although Twitter tried to recover the revenue by offering Twitter Blue subscriptions, the response has been poor, with less than 1% of monthly users signing up as of March.
According to Bloomberg, Musk’s investment in Twitter is currently valued at $8.8 billion, based on Fidelity’s assessment of his holding. Musk acquired an estimated 79% stake in the company at a cost of over $25 billion.
Soon, Linda Yaccarino will take over the role of Twitter and X Corp‘s CEO from Musk.