Musk: Twitter losing cash as advertising is down and firm is carrying heavy debt

Elon Musk claims that Twitter continues to incur losses as advertising revenue has declined by fifty per cent.

In a reply to a tweet offering business advice, Musk tweeted on Saturday, We’re still negative cash flow, due to (about a) 50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.

We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2023

Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else, he concluded.

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Ever since he took over Twitter in a USD 44 billion deal last fall, Musk has tried to reassure advertisers who were concerned about the ouster of top executives, widespread layoffs and a different approach to content moderation. Some high-profile users who had been banned were allowed back on the site.

In April, Musk said most of the advertisers who left had returned and that the company might become cash-flow positive in the second quarter.

In May, he hired a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, an NBCUniversal executive with deep ties to the advertising industry.

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But since then, Twitter has upset some users by imposing new limits on how many tweets they can view in a day, and some users complained that they were locked out of the site. Musk said the restrictions were needed to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data.

Twitter got a new competitor this month when Facebook owner Meta launched a text-focused app, Threads, and gained tens of millions of sign-ups in a few days. Twitter responded by threatening legal action.

(With agency inputs)