Mutual fund firm Fidelity has reduced its investment in X Holdings – the parent company of Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) – by 71.5% from the original valuation of the shares, according to a new filing.
Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X in October 2022. The fund manager cut the valuation 65% in October 2023. Now, in its November 2023 disclosure, the company has made a further downgrade to the X rating. Notably, Fidelity’s disclosures are one month behind the current date.
The X has gone through a lot of changes in the past year, including hiring a new CEO in former NBCU CEO Linda Yaccarino. During an interview at the Code Conference in September 2023, Yaccarino claimed that the company would achieve profitability in 2024.
The biggest challenge the company faces is convincing advertisers to spend money on the platform. Many high-profile advertisers — including Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney, and Warner Bros. — have pulled out. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate and the European Commission — from the stand after Musk called the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory “the actual truth.”
Later in the month, at the Dealbook conference, he asked advertisers to go fuck themselves.
“What this advertising boycott will do is kill the company,” Musk continued. “The whole world will know that these advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”
in December, Financial Times It stated that X will look to appease small and medium businesses to spend ad dollars on the platform. X objected to The New York Times claims the platform will lose $75 million Due to advertiser boycotts he told FT the estimated drop would be around $10-12 million.
“SMEs are a very important driver, which we have certainly underestimated for a long time.” [was] It’s always part of the plan – and now we’re going to go even further,” X told the publication.
Musk has also made controversial decisions to restore the accounts of previously banned users such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Kanye West, former US President Donald Trump, far-right influencer Andrew Tat, and right-wing academic Jordan Peterson.