Twitter revenues down 40%, Musk to make first major loan payment at end of January

January 18, 2023  10:25

Twitter's revenues have decreased by 40% compared to last year. Zoe Schiffer, one of Platformer's editors, announced this on Twitter.

Also, she recalled that at the end of January, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, will have to make the first major loan payment after acquiring this social media platform.

Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, after which the company has $13 billion in debt. Immediately after the deal, Musk announced that the company was heading full speed toward bankruptcy and daily losses could reach up to $4 million.

Later, in an interview with one of his colleagues at PayPal, David Sacks, Musk said that he had managed to get the company's costs under control, and now it was no longer going full speed into bankruptcy. According to Musk, in general, everything is going in the right direction, but there is still a lot to do to save the business.

From the very first days, Musk began to actively cut staff and cut costs whenever possible. He turned the vacated office space of the Twitter headquarters into a "hotel" where the rest of the employees can spend the night and rest. Unnecessary furniture and equipment from the company's headquarters in San Francisco, where two-thirds fewer people now work than a few months ago, were even auctioned off.

It seems that despite all the efforts being made, things are still going badly for Twitter. The problems with advertisers, many of whom do not like Musk's policy, may also play a role in this. According to media reports, this social media platform's advertising business, which had annual revenue of $5 billion, began to suffer losses after Musk became the owner of Twitter. For example, General Motors, Volkswagen, Carlsberg, and many other companies, which together spent about $2 billion on advertising on this social media platform in 2020-2022, have recently stopped their advertising campaigns on Twitter.

According to experts, the cutbacks at Twitter probably also played a role in the decrease in revenue, due to which many advertisers lost their contact persons in the company and faced a number of difficulties. Technical issues have also surfaced that are likely to drive away advertisers.

However, the main reason for the suspension of advertising campaigns on Twitter, according to Financial Times experts, was not technical problems at all, nor the lack of people with whom advertisers are used to working, but Elon Musk's personality: his unpredictability and being conflicted.

In early December, Musk sold some of his Tesla shares for $3.6 billion, calling it a "safety cushion" for Twitter. But after the company's stock price plummeted, he vowed not to sell his shares until 2024. Time will tell if this move will help save Twitter and get it back on its feet.


 
 
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