The company formerly known as Twitter has valued its equity at $45 a share in an internal note sent to employees, Fortune has reported. The amount is significantly less than then $54.20 per share Elon Musk paid for it upon his acquisition in 2022. 

X had previously offered employees stock in March at a $20bn (£16.4bn) valuation.

The company’s new value was probably estimated using a 409A valuation, the independent assessment method recommended by the Internal Revenue Service for private firms. As such, it is not entirely surprising that the value of X has dropped, as this method has a tendency to skew more conservatively than valuations based on venture capital funding and other methods.

This internal valuation marks a 55 per cent drop in X’s value over the past 12 months. The drop could be a result of the stream of controversies that have plagued the social media platform since it was acquired by the owner of Tesla and SpaceX for $44bn (£36bn).

In the...