Elon Musk says Twitter’s cash flow still negative as ad revenue declines

CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk says Twitter’s cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.

In a tweet on Saturday, Musk said “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”

Following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October, the social media company experienced months of turmoil, including hundreds of layoffs, criticism about lax content moderation, and an exodus of many sponsors who did not want their ads to appear next to bad content.

Musk’s appointment of Linda Yaccarino as CEO, a former ad boss at Comcast’s NBCUniversal, showed that ad sales would continue to be a priority for Twitter even as it worked to raise subscription revenue. In early June, Yaccarino began working at Twitter.

We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2023

In an effort to attract more content creators to the site, Twitter said on Thursday that select content creators will be eligible to receive a portion of the company’s ad revenue.