Twitter Is Roughly Breaking Even, Has 1,500 Employees, Says Musk

Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter Inc., claimed on Wednesday that the social media business is "roughly breaking even," noting that the majority of its advertisers have returned and that its aggressive cost-cutting measures have begun to pay off following significant layoffs.

In an interview with the BBC that was live streamed on Twitter Spaces, Musk stated that Twitter currently has roughly 1,500 employees, a significant decrease from the "just under 8,000 staff members" it had prior to his acquisition of the company in October.

Since Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, it has been characterized by confusion and uncertainty as many of the engineers who are in charge of resolving and avoiding service disruptions have been laid off, according to insiders who spoke to Reuters.

According to internet watchdog group NetBlocks, Twitter experienced its sixth significant outage since the start of the year last week when a problem blocked thousands of users from accessing links.

Musk recognized some issues, such as recent outages, but claimed they were short-lived.

He claims that Twitter had to take extraordinary measures due to a $3 billion negative cash flow crisis, which included mass 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 numbers, New York Post reported.

Since the acquisition, Twitter has experienced a sharp fall in advertising.

That was attributed, according to Musk, to the cyclical nature of advertising spending, some of which was "political."

The majority of its advertisers, he claimed on Wednesday, have come back.

The billionaire, who also owns rocket manufacturer SpaceX and electronic car producer Tesla, claimed he has no one in mind to succeed him as Twitter CEO.

Tesla shareholders have questioned Musk about how much time he spends managing the social media site, and he has stated that finding a new Twitter CEO would be "good timing" towards the end of this year.