Fidelity, one of the co-investors that backed Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, has written down its stake in the social media platform by 60% since the deal closed in late October. Fidelity's Contrafund, with $91 billion assets under management, valued its Twitter shares at $21.2 million as of Dec. 30, according to a new disclosure posted on its website Sunday. The valuation marked a 9.6% decline from the end of November ($23.5 million) and a 60% slump from $53.5 million at the end of October, three days after Musk's $44 billion takeover deal closed. The Boston-based asset manager holds Twitter shares in a few of its mutual funds under the name "X Holdings I Inc," and Fidelity evaluates its holdings on a monthly basis. Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund owned $7.8 million of Twitter shares at the end of 2022. The markdown came as technology names suffered a brutal sell-off in 2022 in the face of rising rates. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was down 33% last year, driven by steep losses in its largest stocks. Meta Platforms lost 64% in 2022, for example. Amazon was down 50% last year. Axios first reported on the change in valuation. Musk has sold billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to finance the Twitter takeover, and pulled in talent from Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Co. , including executives, engineers and lawyers, to assist him at Twitter. The Contrafund slashed its holding in Tesla at the end of 2022, citing the high valuation even after last year's 65% sell-off. "The stock was too expensive for us, thus the fund held only a negligible position as of year-end," the Contrafund managers said in a year-end review.
