Elon Musk revealed on Twitter on Saturday that the service still has a negative cash flow as a result of a 50% decline in advertising revenue and a “heavy debt load.”
In response to a follower’s business advise, the billionaire owner tweeted on Saturday, “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”
The tone of the post is remarkably different from what Musk said to the BBC in April, when he claimed that the platform is now “roughly breaking even” and that the majority of its sponsors have returned. After Musk took ownership, a large number of sponsors left the site, making ad income a divisive issue and an uphill battle for the website. Content moderation, huge layoffs, and general apprehension about Twitter’s future worried advertisers.
Former NBC Universal marketing executive Linda Yaccarino just succeeded Musk as CEO; he is probably relying on her marketing expertise to win them back.
According to an internal presentation cited by The New York Times, Twitter’s US advertising revenue from the five weeks ending April 1 to the first week of May was down 59% from the same period last year. No one from CNN has seen the presentation.
According to information given to CNN by market intelligence company Sensor Tower last month, only 43% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers in September—the month before Musk’s takeover—were still running ads there as of April.
In a Twitter Spaces livestream event he co-hosted with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, Musk remarked, “It’s been extremely difficult.” We basically lost half of our revenue as a result of not abiding by the rules. He continued, saying that it has been a “huge struggle for Twitter to break even.”
Additionally, Twitter is under more pressure now that its rival app, Meta’s Threads, has more than 100 million downloads less than a week after its release.
To entice more content creators to join the site, Twitter said on Thursday that they will be allowed to share in the site’s advertising revenue. The creators’ posts must have had at least 5 million impressions in each of the previous three months and Twitter Blue in order to be eligible.
The self-described “misogynist” online influencer Andrew Tate, who was charged in Romania with human trafficking, rape, and organising a criminal gang, is one of the creators who are now making money off Twitter.
Twitter’s ad revenue has plummeted by 50%, according to a recent comment made by Elon Musk about the social media platform’s financial performance. The difficulties Twitter is now having in monetizing its platform are shown by this sharp decline in advertising income.
Also emphasized by Musk was Twitter’s negative cash flow at the moment. This indicates that the business’s spending are outpacing its cash inflow from a variety of sources, such as advertising revenue, subscription fees, and partnership payments. The financial challenges Twitter is facing are further highlighted by its negative cash flow position.
These Elon Musk comments shed light on Twitter’s financial difficulties, which is a prominent player in the social media sector. Twitter will need to reevaluate its business model and find creative ways to generate money and improve its financial position due to a fall in ad revenue and negative cash flow.
