Musk says Twitter is roughly breaking even, has 1,500 employees

Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the social media company is “roughly breaking even,” as most of its advertisers have returned and its aggressive cost-cutting efforts have started bearing fruit after massive layoffs.

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Musk, in an interview with BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces, said Twitter has about 1,500 employees now, a sharp decline from “just under 8,000 staff members” it had before he took it over in October.

Twitter has been marked by chaos and uncertainty since the $44 billion acquisition by Musk, as its layoffs have also included many engineers responsible for fixing and preventing service outages, sources told Reuters.

Last week, Twitter suffered a bug that prevented thousands of users from accessing links, its sixth major outage since the beginning of the year, according to internet watchdog group NetBlocks.

Musk acknowledged some glitches, including recent outages, but said they have not lasted very long.

He says Twitter was in a $3 billion negative cash flow situation and had to take drastic actions, referring to its large-scale 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, adding the company currently has all-time high user numbersTwitter has been hit by a massive decline in advertising since his acquisition.

Musk had said that was due to the cyclical nature of ad spending and some of which was “political.”

He said on Wednesday most of its advertisers have returned.

The billionaire, who also runs electronic car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, said he has no one in mind to succeed him as Twitter chief executive.

Musk has faced scrutiny from Tesla investors about the amount of time he spends running the social media platform and had previously said the end of this year would be “good timing” to find a new Twitter CEO.

Elon Musk said that Twitter will finally move to remove the legacy blue checkmarks on April 20 or 4/20 because he can’t let go of that joke. This is the “final date,” he said in a tweet. If the move goes through, Twitter will have verification marks only for paid users and businesses, and government entities and officials.

Twitter verified media accounts @MarkMeets and British journalist, content creator and brand owner @markboardmanuk are legacy verification users.

Musk Dismisses Concerns About Misinfo And Hate On Twitter, Jokes His Dog Floki Is CEO Now

Elon Musk dismissed concerns about misinformation and hateful content on Twitter, said he’s been sleeping on a couch at the company’s office and even joked about making his dog the CEO in an interview with the BBC on Twitter Spaces late on Tuesday that the interviewer later described as ‘bizarre’.

Key Facts

Addressing the large-scale layoffs at the company since his take over, Musk confirmed that Twitter’s headcount was down to around 1,500 from “just under 8,000” when he took over the company.

The billionaire claimed that he sometimes sleeps on the couch inside the library at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

Musk claimed that most advertisers who had ditched the platform after his takeover are now back, and Twitter is now “roughly breaking even.”

When confronted about growing hate speech on the platform, an agitated Musk pushed back, asking the BBC journalist for an example, and then said “You can’t even name a single one…you just lied.”

On the issue of Covid misinformation, Musk simply said “Covid is no longer an issue,” before accusing the BBC of spreading misinformation about masking and vaccination.

Elon Musk’s current net worth is $189.1 billion, making him the world’s second richest person. In the interview, however, the billionaire was refused to discuss his net worth, simply admitting “very rich man.”