Leading Wall Street banks are reportedly planning to sell up to $3 billion in loans tied to X, Elon Musk’s social media company, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Morgan Stanley, a key player in Musk’s acquisition of X, is said to have contacted potential buyers ahead of a sale expected to occur next week, the sources revealed.
The Wall Street Journal reported that banks are targeting a price range of 90 to 95 cents on the dollar for the debt. The report sparked a sharp denial from Musk, who dismissed it as “false” in a post on X and accused the publication of “lying.”
The Journal also claimed Musk sent an internal email in January highlighting X’s ongoing financial troubles while emphasizing its rising influence. Musk countered these claims, stating, “I sent no such email.”
Morgan Stanley, alongside Bank of America and Barclays, was part of the consortium that financed Musk’s $44 billion purchase of X—formerly Twitter—in 2022.
Requests for comments from the banks involved went unanswered at the time of writing.
Banks generally sell off such loans shortly after closing a deal, but in X’s case, offloading the debt has proven unusually complex.
Musk’s sweeping changes to the platform, including significant layoffs in moderation teams, and his own polarizing activity on X, have scared away advertisers, denting revenues and increasing concerns about the platform’s financial stability. Reuters previously reported that Musk’s growing political influence had encouraged lenders to reconsider their prospects of selling the debt without taking heavy losses.
In late 2022, earlier efforts to unload the loans were met with resistance from buyers, with some bids requiring banks to absorb losses as steep as 20% of the debt’s face value, insiders said.
Additional lenders that participated in financing Musk’s takeover include BNP Paribas, Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho, and Société Générale.
