Without his acquisition of the company, Twitter “would have gone bankrupt in four months,” Elon Musk said at a Morgan Stanley media conference Tuesday. Musk thanked Apple and Disney for advertising on Twitter.
[Musk] express[ed] gratitude to Disney and Apple for being long-term partners. “Thank you,” he said… “The most important thing is that the advertising is effective, that it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company.”
Usage and engagement on Twitter have never been stronger, Musk said. Monetizing the platform’s large, global, educated and affluent user base remains the key challenge. The broader media sector happens to be in an ad slump triggered by recession fears. But even so, he said the former regime left lots of money on the table, and also had unsustainable cost base.
He said when the deal closed October 29, Twitter was tracking “at a negative $3 billion a year run rate, and had #1 billion in the bank. So that’s a pretty dire situation.” Costs were skyrocketing and the company “would have gone bankrupt in four months.” He insists the highly public, deep rounds of layoffs and restructuring have cut the (non-interest) burn rate to about $1.5 billion and that Twitter has a shot at being cash-flow positive next quarter, depending on the ad market. “It’s been a very difficult four months, but I am very optimistic about the future,” he said.
MacDailyNews Note: The ad slump about which Musk speaks is real. It’s currently an existential threat. Please help support MacDailyNews if you can. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Last December, Musk posted a tweet thanking advertisers for returning to Twitter:
Just a note to thank advertisers for returning to Twitter
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2022
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