X Corp. told employees that it is worth approximately $19 billion, showing the value of Elon Musk’s social-media platform remains far below its acquisition price a year ago as Musk has rolled out a raft of changes.
X is granting employees stock grants at a price of $45 a share, which translates to a company valuation about 55% below the price of Musk’s $44 billion takeover in October 2022, according to an internal document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In March, Musk told employees they would receive stock awards based on a roughly $20 billion valuation.
Fortune previously reported the latest stock grants and valuation.
Musk has worked furiously to transform X into what he has described as both the global town square and a so-called everything app, where people will be able to watch videos and do their banking as well as engage with others on the platform. He cut roughly 80% of staff through layoffs and other departures, loosened content moderation and overhauled the verification system.
A year in, the company formerly known as Twitter is struggling on a number of metrics, according to third-party data. Musk has voiced optimism.
The company’s advertising business, which provides most of its revenue, has also struggled after many brands pulled back from the platform out of concerns over Musk’s approach to content moderation and management. Musk posted in September that the company’s U.S. advertising revenue was down 60%, though he said it was slowly improving.
In documents about the stock program, the company also described its business strategy, saying its goals included serving as “the de facto public town square,” promoting healthy discourse, reducing spam and bot accounts, improving its offerings for advertisers to enable more relevant ads, improving video and audio tools for creators, and more.
Musk said in a March note to staff that he was optimistic about the social-media company’s future. “I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation,” meaning stock granted at the time would be worth 10 times more, he said.
Musk also said in the March email that Twitter was being reshaped so rapidly that the company “can be thought of as an inverse startup.” He said radical changes have been necessary in part to ensure that Twitter didn’t go bankrupt, according to the email.
Write to Alexa Corse at alexa.corse@wsj.com