Billionaire Elon Musk paid $44 billion to acquire social media platform Twitter, which he later rebranded to X.
The valuation of the platform has declined sharply since the 2022 purchase with Fidelity marking the value down by 72% as of December.
A new report shows a secondary deal for the company has pushed its valuation back to where Musk took the company private.
What Happened: X is once again worth $44 billion, a valuation that comes with Musk sharing improving financials for the company and advertisers like Apple and Amazon.com returning to spending on the platform.
A secondary deal completed earlier this month valued the company at $44 billion, according to a new Financial Times report.
The report said the social media company could also be raising up to $2 billion in a primary round, looking to pay off some of the company’s debt.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that X raised around $1 billion in new equity from investors including Musk, valuing the company at close to what the billionaire originally paid. Darsana Capital Partners, who bought some of X’s debt in recent months, participated in the equity round, according to the report.
While X’s revenue has dropped since Musk took the company private, a recent report showed an improvement in recent months to revenue and showed that adjusted EBITDA was also improving.
As Benzinga recently reported, large banks that helped finance the Twitter buyout have been stuck holding their debt in the company longer than they typically do on large buyout deals like Musk’s. A quick declining value led to bankers seeing lower valuation for their debt and reasons to hold on until things improved.
Lenders sold off their debt recently with values of 90 to 95 cents on the dollar and in some cases at original value, which comes on top of interest payments the banks have already received.
X is also nearing the launch of X Money, the company’s push into digital wallets and peer-to-peer payments as part of Musk’s plan to have the company part of an “everything app.” Visa Inc (NYSE:V) was named as the company’s first partner for X Money back in January.