Twitter’s Cash Flow Remains Negative, Says Elon Musk
US billionaire Elon Musk said on Saturday that Twitter’s cash flow remains negative due to a nearly 50% drop in ad revenue and a heavy debt load, which fell short of his March forecast that Twitter’s platform could achieve positive cash flow by June. According to “Reuters,” Musk said in a tweet on Twitter, “We need to achieve positive cash flow before we can splurge on anything else.”
This is the latest sign that aggressive cost-cutting measures since Musk’s October acquisition of Twitter have not been enough by themselves to move cash flow into positive territory, and it also indicates that Twitter’s ad revenue they may not have recovered as quickly as Musk said in an interview with the BBC.
After laying off thousands of employees and slashing bills for cloud services, Musk said the company has cut its non-debt spending to $1.5 billion from a projected $4.5 billion in 2023. Twitter must also make annual interest payments of approximately $1.5 billion.
It wasn’t clear how long Musk had been pointing to the 50% drop in ad revenue. Musk said Twitter is on track to generate $3 billion in revenue in 2023, down from $5.1 billion in 2021.
Twitter has been criticized for lax content oversight, resulting in the withdrawal of large numbers of advertisers out of fear that their ads would appear alongside inappropriate content.