Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, revealed that the social media company is “roughly breaking even,” as most of its advertisers have returned and its aggressive cost-cutting efforts have begun to bear fruit following massive layoffs.
Musk said in an interview with BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday, April 12, that Twitter now has about 1,500 employees, down from “just under 8,000” before he took over in October.
According to reports, Twitter has been marked by chaos and uncertainty since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, with layoffs including engineers responsible for preventing service outages.
According to internet watchdog group NetBlocks, Twitter experienced its sixth major outage since the beginning of the year last week when a bug prevented thousands of users from accessing links.
Musk acknowledged some glitches, including recent outages, but claimed they were brief.
He claims Twitter was in a $3 billion negative cash flow situation and had to take drastic measures, such as mass layoffs.
“We could be cash-flow positive this quarter if things go well,” he said in the interview that attracted more than 3 million listeners.
Musk attributed Twitter’s massive drop in advertising since his acquisition to the cyclical nature of ad spending, some of which was “political.” On Wednesday, he stated that the majority of its advertisers had returned.
Despite being questioned by Tesla investors about the amount of time he spends running the social media platform, the billionaire said he has no one in mind to succeed him as CEO of Twitter.