Twitter is still under severe advertising pressure. According to reports, the platform saw a 40% drop of revenue following the halting of spending by more than 500 clients.
According to the tech newsletter the Platformer, the company’s daily revenues were down 40% year-overyear. The news site the Information reported that staff were informed by more than 500 top Twitter advertisers that spending had been stopped since Elon Musk purchased it in October.
Twitter’s main source of income is advertising, accounting for over 90% of its $5.1bn revenue in 2021. However, clients Audi and Pfizer have been forced to halt after the takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk for $44bn (PS35bn).
Advertisers have been forced to pull out of the platform in large numbers due to concerns about hate speech following its acquisition by a self-described ‘free speech absolutist’. Advertisers were also alarmed at the rise in impersonator accounts after the botched relaunch.
The Information provided more details on the 40% figure. It reported Tuesday that a senior Twitter manager told staff that revenue for Tuesday was 40% less than it was a year ago.
According to internal details, the Information reported that Twitter’s fourth quarter revenue fell by 35%.
These reports were made as the Financial Times reported Twitter was due for payments on its debt of nearly $13bn by the end of the month. Musk is considering options such as selling more shares in Tesla, or placing Twitter under bankruptcy protection. To finance the Twitter deal, Musk sold Tesla shares worth more than $20bn last year.
In December, he stated that Twitter was in a “negative cashflow position of $3bn per year”, but claimed that the company could “roughly” reach cashflow breakdown-even after cost-cutting measures including the departures of over 5,000 employees. He said that Twitter is not in danger of going bankrupt, and that it was “not in the fast lane of bankruptcy any longer”.