Inside Elon Musk’s cost-cutting drive at Twitter

0
241
Inside Elon Musk’s cost-cutting drive at Twitter


Montage of Musk, Twitter logo

FT montage/Getty Images/Bloomberg

From a secretive “war room” at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters final month, Elon Musk’s trusted lieutenants pored over an inventory of staff, displaying how a lot they price the social media firm.

The billionaire proprietor’s “transition team,” headed by Steve Davis, who leads the Musk-owned Boring Company, then started to telephone staffers. Some had been requested to justify their function; others to advocate which colleagues to retain.

Those deliberations knowledgeable Musk’s newest layoffs at Twitter, as a part of his efforts to deliver the lossmaking firm to monetary well being whereas additionally battling an advertiser exodus and unwieldy debt servicing invoice.

The February cuts eliminated greater than 200 employees however had been nonetheless broader and deeper than many staff had anticipated, as a result of they got here after Musk had already laid off half of the corporate’s 7,500 workforce following his acquisition of Twitter in October. The transfer worn out massive swaths of its enterprise growth and product groups, leaving Twitter leaner—and extra unstable.

This account of the billionaire’s ongoing efforts to wrestle Twitter’s funds underneath management together with his inside circle relies on interviews with present and former Twitter staffers, folks conscious of Musk’s considering, and his public statements on Twitter and to traders.

Musk, Twitter, and most members of the transition staff didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Formed in November, the transition staff has typically refused to right away pay lots of Twitter’s distributors, landlords, and companions within the hope of holding down prices, in some circumstances irking shoppers and resulting in frosty stand-offs.

This push comes as Twitter is anticipated to roll out new fairness compensation packages for workers in late March, mentioned two folks conversant in the scenario. For tax functions, Twitter is within the strategy of calculating a brand new valuation to cost the frequent fairness within the enterprise, which determines the worth of employees inventory choices, the folks mentioned. One of them mentioned the valuation would most likely be far decrease than the $44 billion acquisition worth.

At an investor convention hosted by Morgan Stanley final week, Musk mentioned he had lower non-debt expenditures to $1.5 billion, from the $4.5 billion that he claimed it might have in any other case incurred in 2023, including that Twitter may attain constructive money move by the second quarter.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here