Elon Musk: Twitter is operating at break-even and could turn profitable 'in a matter of months'

By Anviksha Patel

Laying off thousands at Twitter was 'painful,' said Musk

In the almost six months since his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk has fired thousands of employees, earmarked a couch on the Twitter HQ library for sleeping, promoted his dog to the role of chief executive and apparently recouped most advertisers that abandoned the social media platform after his acquisition.

"It's not been boring, it's been quite a roller coaster," Musk summarized in a last-minute interview with the BBC on Wednesday via Twitter Spaces.

The Tesla (TSLA) and Space X CEO rambled in an almost two-hour live discussion about his time at the helm of Twitter, ranging from the company's financial state to agitated comments about misinformation and hate speech on the site.

Tesla's stock rose over 2% in early Wednesday trading.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the interview:

Twitter is 'roughly breaking even'

Musk said that the social media site is doing well financially since his acquisition, usage and growth are satisfactory.

"I feel like we're headed to a good place. We're roughly break-even, I think we're trending toward being cash flow positive very soon, literally in a matter of months," he said.

Most of the lost advertisers are back on board

Musk's acquisition drove away a chunk of the site's advertisers. From last September to October, Twitter's top 10 advertisers spent $71 million on ads and in the last two months, that dropped to $7.6 million, according to estimates from Sensor Tower.

Since then, he has made efforts to mitigate the shortfall by boosting non-ad-revenue with Twitter Blue subscriptions, which has made $11 million from mobile subscriptions in its first three months, Sensor Tower data shows.

Musk also claimed on Wednesday that most advertisers are returning. "Almost all of them have either come back or said they're coming back," he said.

More:Elon Musk's Twitter is facing a steep slump in ad revenues this year, according to this forecast

Laying off 80% of workforce was 'painful'

Musk said that laying off almost 6,500 people at Twitter ---- around 80% of the workforce ---- was "painful" and "one of the hardest things" he has had to do. He added that headcount currently stands at 1,500 people.

Many laid-off employees found out they lost their jobs after being locked out of their laptops, including Haraldur 'Halli' Thorleifsson, who Musk had publicly taunted, and consequently apologized to, on Twitter for asking him about his employment status.

"It's not physically possible to speak to that many people," Musk said in the interview.

Shutting down one Twitter data center

Musk admitted to some the problems at the company, such as closing a data center last year, which caused issues with the platform's servers.

"There have been a few outages, but not for long," he said.

Twitter is part of the X Corp shell company

Musk confirmed in a Twitter Spaces after the interview that Twitter is now merged with his newly formed shell company called X Corp, which has been touted as Musk's future parent company for all his endeavors.

"Yes, there is something more to it," he told listeners.

Read: 'X' marks the spot where Elon Musk has buried Twitter Inc

His dog Floki is Twitter CEO

After he launched a poll on Twitter that declared he should step down as CEO, Musk repeated throughout the interview that he had adhered to the poll result.

"I did stand down," he said. "I keep telling you I'm not the CEO of Twitter, my dog is the CEO of Twitter."

"I said I would appoint a new CEO and I did and it's my dog," he added later.

-Anviksha Patel

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04-12-23 0952ET

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