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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 21 (AP) — Elon Musk is defending his massive cost-cutting at Twitter, arguing that it’s necessary for the social media platform to survive next year, in part in connection with his $44 billion takeover of the company. related debt payments.
“This company is like, basically, you’re flying high to the ground in an airplane and the engines are on fire and the controls don’t work,” Musk told a late-night audience on a Twitter Spaces conference call Tuesday.
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Earlier on Tuesday, Elon Musk said he planned to stay on as Twitter’s chief executive until he found someone willing to succeed him.
Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to withdraw from an online poll the billionaire himself created and pledged to abide by.
“When I find someone stupid enough to take over, I will resign as CEO!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will only manage the software and server teams.”
Since taking over the San Francisco social media platform in late October, Musk’s tenure as CEO has been marked by rapidly issuing rules and policies that are often withdrawn or changed shortly after being made public.
Musk said on Tuesday night that Twitter could lose about $3 billion next year without his “frantic cost-cutting efforts over the past five weeks” and trying to build out a more robust paid subscription service. He blamed in part the $12.5 billion in debt tied to his agreement to buy the company in April, as well as the Federal Reserve’s recent rate hikes.
Some of Musk’s actions upset Twitter advertisers and turned off users. He fired more than half of Twitter’s workforce, fired contract content moderators and disbanded the company’s Trust and Safety Advisory Council, which was formed in 2016 to address hate speech and other issues on the platform.
The Tesla chief executive has also alienated investors in his electric car company over concerns that Twitter is taking too much of his attention and potentially offending loyal customers.
Even more unnerving to investors, Tesla’s stock price is plummeting.
Since Musk took over Twitter on October 27, Tesla shares have fallen 35%, and investors have lost billions of dollars. Tesla’s market capitalization topped $1.1 trillion on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed he bought Twitter stock. The company has lost 58% of its value since then, at a time when rival automakers are chipping away at Tesla’s dominant share of electric vehicle sales.
Shares fell on Wednesday, like every day this week.
Tesla was trading at around $400 per share at the start of the year and is now trading at less than $140.
Musk tried to defend some of his recent Twitter decisions on the Twitter Spaces conference call.
“They might look fake or weird or whatever at times,” Musk said. “It’s because we had an emergency fire drill on our hands. That’s why. Not because I’m born headstrong. Or at least, aspirationally, I’m not born headstrong.” (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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