Wave of layoffs – Musk: ‘Twitter only had 4 months to live’

It was “painful” to lay off so many people, but without radical austerity measures, Twitter would only have “four months to live,” Musk said in an interview with British broadcaster BBC on Wednesday. Prior to the acquisition, Twitter earned almost all of its business from ad revenue, such as when companies pay to have their tweets appear in users’ news feeds.

Musk’s purchase was followed by a wave of advertisers fearing a negative climate for their tweets among the controversial entrepreneur. Sales have halved, as Musk admitted at the time. At the same time, Twitter must pay interest on about twelve billion dollars (about eleven billion euros) in loans for the acquisition. According to Tesla’s founder, most advertisers are back on board. There are more ads again and Twitter has only minimal losses, he added, without citing numbers. Since the company is no longer listed on the stock exchange, it no longer has to publish quarterly reports.

Musk reveals real reason for Twitter purchase
After announcing the purchase in spring 2022, Musk tried to get out of the deal relatively quickly. He referred to an allegedly large number of automated bot accounts, which means that the price he proposed is no longer justified. The $44 billion (about €41 billion) was a hefty premium to Twitter’s stock market value at the time. The management of Twitter, which was initially against the takeover attempt, but after the agreement with Musk committed itself to the interests of shareholders, took him to court. Asked if he ultimately made the Twitter purchase because a judge would have forced him to do it anyway, Musk said in the BBC interview: “Yes, that’s why.”