• by Karlene Lukovitz , May 31, 2023

Twitter is now worth about $15 billion, or roughly a third of the $44 billion that Elon Musk and co-investors paid for it last October, according to a Fidelity estimate.

Fidelity was part of a group of outside investors that committed more than $316 million to the Twitter acquisition.

This is the fourth time since the acquisition that Fidelity has marked down Twitter’s estimated value.

The Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund’s stake in the social media platform, now under Musk X Holdings Corp., was valued at nearly $6.55 million as of April 28 — down from $7.8 million as of Jan. 31 and about $8.63 million as of the end of November 2022.

Twitter lost much of its base of major advertisers because of their concerns about brand safety as Musk rejected most content moderation. Over this past weekend, Twitter made the latest move in that direction by dropping out of following the European Union’s Code of Practice, a system aimed at preventing profiteering from disinformation and fake news, while supporting increased transparency of political advertising for major online platforms.

Twitter had hoped to raise revenue by charging for a Twitter Blue subscriptions — but just 1% of monthly users had signed up for subscriptions as of the end of March.

However, the monthly Fidelity report of portfolio valuations in which the latest Twitter markdown does not include assessment for activity during the month of May — meaning it does not include the likely positive impacts of Musk having named former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO.

Twitter did not comment on Fidelity’s report.

Musk's own investment of more than $25 billion to acquire an estimated 79% of Twitter is now worth $8.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, using Fidelity's new valuation estimate to calculate the value of his holding.

That represents an $850 million hit on Musk's total worth of about $187 billion, which is up $48 billion year to date, mainly driven by a 63% surge in Tesla stock, Bloomberg noted.