After its valuation plunged in recent years, X is now worth $44 billion — the same price owner Elon Musk paid for the platform, then known as Twitter, in 2022. The $44 billion valuation was reported by Financial Times on Tuesday and is based on a recent deal where investors sold their shares in the app to other investors.
The news came on the same day Bloomberg reported Musk had spent another $150 million buying shares of X last year at a valuation near its 2022 price tag. X’s rebound comes just a few months after Fidelity had valued the company at $12.32 billion, or 72% less than what Musk paid for it.
What’s behind the bounce back? For starters, major advertisers like Disney and Apple have returned to X in recent months, and the app has significantly trimmed its expenses since Musk took over.
The company posted $1.2 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization last year, according to FT. For comparison, Twitter reported a loss of $221 million in 2021, its last full year as a public company; The company posted two profitable years in 2018 and 2019, bringing in $1.2 billion in ’18 and $1.45 billion in ’19.
X has made a number of changes since Musk took over in late 2022, from giving users the option to pay for blue check mark to rolling out Grok, its artificial intelligence model.
Some investors have pointed to Musk’s close ties to President Trump as another reason to be bullish on X, although that has not necessarily been helping Tesla, his electric car company, to this point. Tesla’s stock price has dropped 38% since the start of the year, as critics of Musk and his work with the Department of Government Efficiency have attacked Tesla stores and vandalized cars. Tesla’s stock price on Wednesday was up 4.5% to $235.39 per share.
