Elon Musk finalized a deal to take Twitter private for $44 billion (currently about RMB 302.28 billion). According to The Information, Musk offered stock awards worth about $20 billion (currently about RMB 137.4 billion) in a recent email to employees, a value that is less than half of what he paid to acquire the company.
That represents an acknowledgement by Musk that Twitter’s market value has fallen since he completed the deal, but it’s still well above the open-market valuation of its Twitter rival, the outlet noted.
Musk expects Twitter’s revenue this year to be under $3 billion (currently about RMB 20.61 billion), and given the company’s $13 billion (currently about RMB 89.31 billion) in debt, the $20 billion valuation here implies 11 times Twitter’s revenue this year, with an implied enterprise value of $33 billion (currently about RMB 226.71 billion ).
By comparison, Twitter’s closest digital ad competitors on the open market, Snap, Pinterest and Meta Platforms, are trading at an average of 4.5 times their projected 2023 revenue to their enterprise value, according to Koyfin.
