Elon Musk's $1.1 Billion Profit Now $40 Million Loss Due To Twitter Stock Crash

Daniel Mitchell-Benoit
Elon Musk at the 2022 Met Gala, looking over his left shoulder towards a camera.
Getty | Dimitrios Kambouris

Elon Musk's recent promise to buy Twitter may have come with some swift regrets as social media stocks have taken a harsh plummet across the board. What was initially set to be a massive profit for the already-multi-billionaire has now become a huge loss.

Not to mention that Twitter's decline is far from the only grievance the famed entrepreneur is facing lately.

Elon Musk's $1.1 billion Twitter profit has vanished in just four weeks.

Someone holding a phone displaying Elon Musk's Twitter account page in front of the twitter logo as a background.
Getty | CHRIS DELMAS

The Tesla CEO had started purchasing stock in the social media company in January, building up quite the stake, about 9% by the time April rolled around. Then, he offered to buy the entire company outright.

Twitter saw an immediate hike in stock prices.

Elon Musk at the 2022 Met Gala, looking over his left shoulder towards a camera.
Getty | Dimitrios Kambouris

Musk had originally purchased 73 million shares for about $36.16 apiece before his buyout offer. After the offer was made public, stock prices jumped to $51.70. This would have resulted in a whopping $1.1 billion gain.

Now, though, those same stocks have fallen.

A computer monitor tracking stock prices.
Unsplash | Nick Chong

They recently saw a pretty steep plunge that had them under $36, meaning that billion-dollar profit turned into a $40 million loss right before his very eyes, and all in the span of less than a month.

This price drop wasn't random.

The bottom half of someone's phone screen where the Snapchat app icon is visible, featuring notifications.
Unsplash | Neelabh Raj

Snap, owner of Snapchat, announced it wouldn't be meeting its revenue target for this quarter, so investors were selling off social media and advertising stock in response. This also comes after Musk's sort of dodgy behaviors around his Twitter purchase, seeming to hold off and claiming it's due to the amount of bots on the site.

Musk has also been facing some troubles in the Tesla department.

The Tesla logo on the back of a car that appears to have been rained on.
Unsplash | Austin Ramsey

The car company has seen quite the decline this year on its own, though some believe these might be linked to Musk's Twitter business.

As Wedbush managing director Dan Ives said, "This circus show has been a major overhang on Tesla's stock. Musk is facing a fork-in-the-road situation in which he has to decide his next step in this soap opera, as Tesla investor patience is wearing very thin."

h/t: Insider