ツイッターの評価額２００億ドル マスク氏、従業員に株式譲渡へ

【ニューヨークＡＦＰ＝時事】米ツイッターを買収したイーロン・マスク氏は同社従業員への株式譲渡計画に当たり、同社の評価額を２００億ドル（約２兆６１００億円）に設定した。５か月前の買収額４４０億ドル（約５兆７５００億円）の半分以下にとどまる。米メディアが報じた。（写真は米ツイッター本社ビルにあるロゴマーク。資料写真）
　ツイッターの評価額は、スナップチャットを運営するスナップの１８２億ドル（約２兆３８００億円）や、画像収集管理サイトのピンタレストの１８７億ドル（約２兆４４００億円）をわずかに上回る水準。
　マスク氏は従業員宛てのメールで、ツイッターの企業価値低下について、同社は一時、破産の危機に陥るなど、深刻な経営難に直面している点を挙げた。
　ただ同氏は、買収劇に伴う混乱を受けて低迷していた広告収入が回復しつつあるとして、今年第２四半期には収支は均衡する見込みだとしている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/03/27-17:21）

Elon Musk has put the current value of Twitter at $20 billion, less than half the $44 billion he paid for the social media platform just five months ago, according to an internal email seen by American news media.
The email to employees referred to a new stock compensation program in the San Francisco-based company and the allocation of shares to employees of X Holdings, Twitter's umbrella company since Musk purchased it in late October.
The compensation plan values the platform at $20 billion, slightly more than Snapchat's parent company Snap ($18.2 billion) or Pinterest ($18.7 billion), both of which are publicly traded, unlike Twitter.
Musk, who is also the chief executive of Tesla Inc. and aerospace group SpaceX, said that Twitter would allow its employees to cash in shares every six months.
A query from AFP emailed to Twitter's communications department generated an automatic response in the form of a poop emoji.
In the internal email, Musk describes the brutal contraction in Twitter's value. He says the platform faced such grave financial difficulties that at one point it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Twitter was trending to lose ~$3B/year, Musk said in a message posted Saturday on the platform.
He cited a revenue drop of $1.5 billion a year and a debt-servicing burden of the same amount -- leaving it with only 4 months of money.
Musk, Twitter's majority shareholder, added simply: Extremely dire situation.
But he then said that It looks like we will break even in the second quarter of the year, with advertisers -- many of whom fled the platform after the mercurial billionaire bought it -- now beginning to return.
Since taking control, Musk has sharply cut the group's payroll from 7,500 employees to fewer than 2,000.
He said in the email that he sees a clear but difficult path to a valuation of $250 billion, without specifying how long that might take.
However, in another setback for the company, fragments of Twitter's source code were published on the development platform GitHub, the latter told AFP on Sunday, confirming a report by the New York Times.
GitHub removed the files from its site at Twitter's request, but their brief exposure could allow hackers to identify flaws in Twitter's original software.