Elon Musk said, due to advertising revenue fell nearly 50% and heavy debt burden, Twitter’s cash flow is still negative. That is to say, he did not meet the March expected Twitter can realize the goal of positive cash flow in June.
That’s the latest operating data since Elon Musk bought Twitter last October (it was delisted after the acquisition), and suggests that Twitter’s ad revenue may not have recovered as quickly as Musk said it would in an interview with the BBC in April.
In that interview, ElonMusk said that most advertisers had returned to the Twitter platform. Before that, Twitter was criticized for lax content censorship, which in turn further triggered a mass withdrawal of advertisers who didn’t want their ads to appear on inappropriate content.
After laying off thousands of employees and reducing spending on cloud services, Elon Musk has said the company has reduced non-debt spending to $1.5 billion from a projected $4.5 billion in 2023.
In addition, Twitter will have to pay interest of about $1.5 billion per year due to the debt it took on in the $44 billion deal.
Elon Musk mentioned that the timeframe for a 50 percent drop in ad revenue is unclear. He has said Twitter is targeting revenue of $3 billion in 2023, down from $5.1 billion in 2021.
Elon Musk also hired Linda Yaccarino, the former chief marketing officer of Comcast’s NBCUniversal, as CEO, suggesting that ad sales are a high priority for Twitter even as he struggles to increase subscription revenue.
Yaccarino, who took over at Twitter in early June, previously told investors that Twitter plans to focus on video, creator and e-commerce partners, and is in preliminary talks with political and entertainment figures, payment service providers and news and media publishers.
