Twitter has endured a tumultuous three months under new owner Elon Musk, but the company may be close to finding some financial stability.
On Sunday, Musk tweeted: “Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to break even if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!”
Weeks before, Musk had been warning that Twitter was facing a financial crisis that could lead the company to file for bankruptcy. In December, he said Twitter was at risk of losing about $3 billion “in negative cash flow per year" unless drastic changes were made. (Even before he acquired the social media platform, the company historically had failed to post a profit.)
To turn things around, Musk has laid off and fired about 70% of Twitter’s staff and also shut down some of the company’s offices and data centers. He’s also been trying to pull in revenue with Twitter Blue, the company’s $8-per-month subscription service. But the same overhaul has also caused some chaos, and may have turned off many advertisers —the main revenue source for the social media platform.
The advertiser exodus has sparked questions over whether Twitter can survive during an economic downturn for the tech industry. But according to Musk, the company is close to keeping its head above water.
In a follow-up tweet, he added: “To be extra clear, Twitter is definitely not financially healthy yet, but is trending to be so. Lots of work still needed to get there.”
Making Twitter profitable has become a major priority for Musk, who paid $44 billion for the social media company. To acquire it, Musk secured at least $13 billion in loans from banks, which he had to begin paying off last month.
To make more revenue, Twitter announced last week it was ending free access to the company’s API, which powers third-party tools and bots to access and post on the platform. Instead, Musk plans on replacing it with a $100-per-month basic tier plan.
The decision is annoying many researchers and small-time developers, who plan on shutting down their projects for Twitter. But on Saturday, Musk indicated he’ll maintain the free API access at least for Twitter bots that post positive content. “Responding to feedback, Twitter will enable a light, write-only API for bots providing good content that is free,” he wrote.