Elon Musk, who suffered several hiccups after Twitter's much-publicised acquisition, put the current value of the microblogging site at US$20 billion, less than half the US$44 billion he paid for the social media platform just five months ago, US media reported.

An internal email, which was accessed by the media and dealt with a new stock compensation programme in the San Francisco-based company, blew the lid off the company's plans.  

“Twitter was trending to lose ~US$3B/year,” Musk said in the message.

The compensation plan values the platform at US$20 billion, slightly more than that of Snap (US$18.2 billion), the parent company of Snapchat, or of the social network and creative website Pinterest (US$18.7 billion), both of which, unlike Twitter, are publicly traded.

Musk wrote about the brutal contraction in Twitter’s value in the email, which also mentioned Twitter's financial crisis and that at one point it was on the verge of bankruptcy.