Elon Musk Says Twitter Now ‘roughly breakeven’
Elon Musk shared positive news about Twitter. According to him, almost all advertisers returned. The platform is currently at breakeven and cash flow is expected to turn positive in the next quarter.
Twitter is close to reaching positive cash flow
Buying Twitter was not easy and Elon Musk took over the company, which was losing money. A little over five months later, the new owner shared positive news about the platform. Musk said during an interview with the BBC that Twitter is close to achieving positive cash flow. This became possible thanks to drastic measures and the great efforts of Musk and the Twitter team.
Advertisers are returning to Twitter
The breakeven point was partly made possible by the fact that advertisers have been moving back to Twitter. During an interview, Musk said that “almost all” advertisers have resumed buying ads on the platform. “Almost all of them… have… either come back or said they’re going to come back, there are very few exceptions,” Musk said.
After Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, advertisers paused. They justified this by the uncertainty around policies of the new owner, who made various changes to the platform. Musk sought to make Twitter more attractive to users by expanding its functionality and making improvements to existing features. The platform is now on track to achieve positive cash flow next quarter.
“Depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be … cashflow-positive this quarter, if things keep going well,” Musk said.
Buying Twitter was painful
During the interview, Musk also said the takeover of Twitter was marked by an “extremely high” level of pain. After he made the offer to buy it, Twitter management took a poison pill strategy. This is a limited-term shareholder rights plan that prevents takeovers against the will of management by allowing shareholders to purchase new shares at a discount when any person purchases more than 15% of the company’s shares. At the same time, Twitter was unable to provide data on the actual number of bot and spam accounts on the platform. This was the reason Musk wanted to cancel the purchase, but Twitter management sued him with the intention of forcing him to complete the purchase.
“It’s been really quite a stressful situation, you know, for the last several months,” Musk said. “It’s been quite painful, but I think… at the end of the day it should have been done.”
