Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, October 31 (Xinhua)-- according to internal documents seen by the New York Times, X (formerly known as Twitter) paid stock subsidies to employees on Monday, valuing the company at about $19 billion (CTOnews.com Note: about 139.08 billion yuan), down about 55% from $44 billion when Elon Musk acquired the company a year ago.

Musk bought Twitter for $54.20 a share more than a year ago. The tech billionaire later said he paid too much for the social network. In March, he wrote in an email to employees that he thought the company was worth $20 billion, calling it a "reverse startup."

Company X said in the new stock subsidy document that shares will be offered to employees in the form of $45 per share, which are restricted stock units (restricted stock units) that employees can acquire over time. Employees will still receive any outstanding shares previously granted to them by management in the form of cash payment of $54.2 a share, the company said.

It is not clear why the share price did not fall by the same percentage as the company's valuation, but Company X may have changed the number of shares outstanding.

In the year since he owned Twitter, Musk has overhauled the company and its social media platform. More than 80 per cent of its initial 7500 employees have resigned or been laid off, and Mr Musk has changed the service's certification process and content review rules. Advertising, the company's main source of revenue, has fallen by nearly 60% in the United States this summer. Musk also added billions of dollars in debt to the company to pay for the acquisition.

Last November, Musk joked about how much it would cost to buy a social media company, asking: "how can you make a small fortune on social media? start with a lot of money."

Mr Musk said he was still optimistic about the company's future. At a company meeting celebrating the first anniversary of the acquisition last week, he explained how he thought company X could offer a variety of functions as a universal app, including dating services and recruitment services. "We are rapidly transforming the company from what it used to be-Twitter 1.0Mel-into a full-featured application on which you can do whatever you want," he told employees. "

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