During a particularly eventful Twitter Spaces interview with BBC journalist James Clayton, Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk provided an update on the social media platform’s finances. If Musk’s comments are accurate, Twitter may reach the green in less than a year after being acquired by the CEO.
While describing Twitter’s finances, Musk noted that the company is already at roughly break-even today, and it won’t be too long before it becomes cash flow positive. The CEO estimated that this milestone might happen within the next few months.
“I feel like we’re headed to a good place. We’re roughly break-even; I think we’re trending towards being cash flow positive very soon, literally in a matter of months,” Musk said, noting that most of “the advertisers are returning.”
⚠️ Elon is live on Twitter Spaces for an interview with BBC's @JamesClayton5. We will be covering the interview in this thread. https://t.co/jcxys0V9GC @elonmusk
— ELON ALERTS (@elon_alerts) April 12, 2023
This is not the first time that Elon Musk predicted Twitter’s cash flow positive status. During a Morgan Stanley Conference last month, Musk predicted that the social media company has a shot at being cash flow positive in the second quarter. Musk’s recent comments suggest that Twitter may accomplish this feat before Q3 begins.
It took a considerable amount of effort and an equal amount of pain for Twitter to get on its current track. As noted by Musk, the social media company is run today with a staff of about 1,500 people, a reduction of over 80% from the 8,000 employees that the company had prior to his $44 billion acquisition.
Musk, however, noted that letting thousands of people go at Twitter was “not fun at all” and it was a “painful” experience. “It was one of the hardest things, certainly,” Musk said.
The fact that Twitter may be on track to be cash-flow positive is a notable accomplishment considering that the company, during its time as a publicly-traded firm, was only profitable twice. Twitter posted its first-ever net income of $1.2 billion in 2018 and was profitable again with a net income of $1.4 billion in 2019. Between 2013 and 2017, as well as 2020 onwards, Twitter did not post a profit at all.
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