Elon Musk said the last three months were “extremely tough” as he scrambled to “save Twitter from bankruptcy” while also running his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
The billionaire’s frank admission followed his past warnings about dire financial conditions at Twitter since he purchased the struggling social media platform for $44 billion last October.
“Wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone,” Musk tweeted Sunday regarding the difficult stretch.
“Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to breakeven if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!” he added.
Musk tempered his optimistic forecast in a separate tweet, noting that Twitter is still “definitely not financially healthy yet” but was “trending to be so” in the future.
“Lots of work still needed to get there,” he said.
Twitter’s daily revenue plunged 40% last month compared to January 2022 as the many of the company’s top advertisers stopped or pulled back on spending, according to tech news site Platformer. There have been estimates that Twitter’s ad revenue declined by as much as 70% last December, year-over-year, Reuters reported.
In a meeting last November, Musk warned Twitter staffers that the company could declare bankruptcy if it could not fix a revenue shortfall. That same month, Musk said Twitter was losing $4 million per day after an exodus of major advertisers caused a “massive drop in revenue.”Twitter has since rolled out a revamped version of its “Blue” subscription service, where users can pay $8 per month for account verification and other perks, in a bid to boost revenue.
Musk has also ordered sharp cost-cutting measures at Twitter in a push that included rounds of layoffs and a reduction in everything from office perks to janitorial services at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. Twitter’s remaining employees were required to “opt in” to a “hardcore” work environment or leave the company.
Musk has confirmed the search for his successor as Twitter CEO is already underway, though he hasn’t provided an exact timeline for when he will step aside.
In addition to his responsibilities at Twitter, Musk was recently called to take the stand as a key witness in a trial with Tesla shareholders. The shareholders had alleged that a 2018 tweet in which Musk claimed to have “funding secured” to take Tesla private had caused them to suffer massive losses after the deal never materialized.
A San Francisco Jury ruled in Musk’s favor last Friday, determining that he was not liable for misleading investors with the 2018 tweet.
Last year, Musk became the first person in history to lose $200 billion in personal wealth – a plunge that coincided with his costly Twitter deal and a sharp drop in Tesla shares during a major selloff in the tech sector.
Tesla has since rallied, with shares surging 75% since the start of 2023. Last quarter, the company reported a record profit of $3.7 billion.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
