Elon Musk stated Twitter was recovering financially after seeing a 50 p.c decline in advert income, making one in every of his first public disclosures concerning the state of the social media firm since he acquired it final yr.
Talking at a convention hosted by Morgan Stanley in San Francisco on Tuesday, Mr. Musk, Twitter’s new proprietor, stated he had taken drastic measures to enhance the corporate’s monetary well being, slashing what he stated was some $3 billion of operational bills. After the cuts, the corporate has an opportunity of getting optimistic money move in its second quarter, he stated.
Within the interview, which was performed by Michael Grimes, a Morgan Stanley banker who helped dealer Mr. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the billionaire stated the corporate would have gone bankrupt “in 4 months” if not for his price slicing. Since his acquisition closed in late October, Mr. Musk has fired or laid off greater than 3,750 workers, let distributors and landlords go unpaid, and eradicated cloud computing prices and one in every of Twitter’s three principal knowledge facilities.
“Within the absence of motion, Twitter would have had $6 billion in price and $3 billion in income,” Mr. Musk stated. He added that earlier projections had put prices at $4.5 billion and gross sales at $4.5 billion. Twitter recorded $5.1 billion in income in 2021 — up 37 p.c from the earlier 12 months — within the final full yr it reported monetary outcomes.
Mr. Musk, nevertheless, appeared to take little duty for the change within the firm’s monetary outlook. He owes what he says is $1.5 billion a yr to service debt he took on to finish the deal. The decline in its advert gross sales, which in earlier years accounted for some 90 p.c of the corporate’s income, occurred amid an advertiser pullback as manufacturers frightened about will increase in hate speech and misinformation.
Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter
- Twitter’s Funds: The entrepreneur Elon Musk stated that Twitter was recovering financially after seeing a 50 p.c decline in advert income, making one in every of his first public disclosures concerning the state of the social media firm since he bought the corporate final yr.
- F.T.C. Investigation: The Federal Commerce Fee is intensifying an investigation into Twitter’s knowledge and privateness practices and is in search of testimony from Mr. Musk.
- Job Cuts: Twitter is alleged to have laid off at the very least 200 extra employees. The social media platform now has a piece power of fewer than 2,000 workers, down from 7,500 when Mr. Elon Musk took it over.
- Outages Are on the Rise: Mr. Musk’s repeated job cuts are stoking new fears that there aren’t sufficient folks to triage Twitter’s outages, bugs and glitches, that are more and more piling up.
He stated the promoting decline was half “cyclic” and half “political” and blamed advertisers’ fears on portrayals of the corporate within the information media.
“Imagine what you see on Twitter and never what you see in newspapers,” Mr. Musk stated.
Mr. Musk’s look got here after Twitter handled a sequence of outages and glitches which have turn out to be extra widespread underneath his possession. On Monday, a bug left many customers unable to click on hyperlinks, load photos or entry sure elements of the positioning.
Mr. Musk additionally spent a part of Monday and Tuesday combating on Twitter with a former employee. After Haraldur Thorleifsson, an worker in Iceland whose design firm was acquired by Twitter, tweeted on the billionaire to make clear if he had been laid off, Mr. Musk accused him utilizing a incapacity as an “excuse” to not work and claimed he was in search of “an enormous pay out.” (Mr. Thorleifsson has muscular dystrophy and makes use of a wheelchair.)
Whereas Mr. Thorleifsson stated on Twitter that he finally did receive confirmation that he had been let go, he was nonetheless ready for phrase as as to if he could be “paid what I’m owed per my contract.” As a result of his firm was purchased by Twitter, Mr. Thorleifsson had a better compensation bundle than most workers and anticipated to be paid in full within the occasion that he was laid off.
“My firm was acquired and because of this I had an obligation to work at Twitter for a sure interval,” Mr. Thorleifsson stated in an e mail despatched to The New York Occasions. “I lived as much as all facets of my contract and now I want to attend and see if Twitter does the identical.”
On Tuesday, earlier than talking on the Morgan Stanley convention, Mr. Musk continued his assaults, calling Mr. Thorleifsson “the worst.” He later deleted the tweet.
Then, in a series of follow up posts, Mr. Musk stated he had a video name with Mr. Thorleifsson on Tuesday afternoon and apologized for his “misunderstanding.” The billionaire stated he had provided Mr. Thorleifsson his job again.
“Higher to speak to folks than talk through tweet,” Mr. Musk tweeted.
