Elon literally just said that bankruptcy is a possibility for twitter in the near future. What are these RSUs going to be worth exactly? And how are they going to cash them out?
Twitter was already losing hundreds of millions per year. They now have another $1.2-1.5 billion per year due in loan payments. Interest rates are rising. Advertising revenue is going down due to the recession and companies cutting Twitter spend due to the toxicity. And his big new subscription idea is already on hold due to impersonation and scams. If employees can see a way out of this, they must really be believers.
The fact is it's a team. Twitter has more than enough runway to get through this transition and turn things around. It's up to the team to execute effectively.
As for runway – that's public information as well. Twitter had $6B in cash and securities as of the last financial statement release. That has likely gone down a fair amount due to acquisition-related costs as well as severance payments. Keeping up with the ~$2B/yr burn rate, unless Twitter can turn things around fast (or get another cash infusion), it has about 2-3 years left in the tank.
They…don’t. Their last quarterly numbers had a hair over $1B in advertising revenue, and that was both a quarterly and year-over-year increase, so they weren’t making more than $4B/year from advertising before Musk took over. Their advance sales were bad for next year because of the potential of the Musk takeover, and big accounts have backed out, and big agencies publicly advised clients to back out of the platform, based on what has gone on since the takeover.
It wasn't. He structured the acquisition such that Twitter took on substantial new debt rather than providing the funds himself.
Was it a good move? Honestly I'm not savvy's enough about this kind of thing to say, but it definitely wasn't the only move.
A substantial part of Twitter's net loss is because he chose to saddle it with new debt.
That's a peculiar use of the word.