Elon Musk says Twitter has negative cash flow due to ad revenue drop

Twitter reached all-time high in device user seconds usage, and that almost all the advertisers who left have either come back or they said they will come back," said Elon Musk.

Hyderabad: Elon Musk, who started paying a select group of creators as promised, has admitted that Twitter is still in the red after a massive 50 per cent drop in advertising revenue and heavy debt from the past.

Twitter has reached all-time high in “device user seconds usage,” and that almost all the advertisers who left have “either come back or they said they will come back.”

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Still, the company is financially weak as several advertisers are yet to return to the platform after ditching it post-Musk takeover.

“We’re still negative cash flow, due to a 50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk said in a tweet.

“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he added. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO took over the micro-blogging platform in a $44 billion acquisition in October last year that included about $13 billion in debt.

In April, Musk told the BBC that “almost all” advertisers had resumed buying ads on Twitter.

A follower suggested Musk on increasing revenue: “You may never see that 50 per cent of traditional advertisements again. Charge people who have a following on a tiered level (some dollar per follower). People with most followers need/use this platform the most for their brand ambitions, but will never pay to advertise. $1 per 1,000 or a similar metric.”

It’s however, still not clear how much Twitter paid creators in the first round of payments.