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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

> It might, perhaps, almost be that a google trends graph isn't a reliable measure of business sustainability.

Twitter was only profitable for one year while it was public (2018). It's not like Elon could make that much worse. For what it's worth, he claims (edit: claimed before the advertisers left) it's break-even now.

As for competing services, Facebook has their work cut out for them. Active Daily User count on Threads has gone down 70% from it's bombastic launch. Average user engagement time has also gone down to 4 minutes from 19.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/threads-user-engagement-continu...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/21/thread...

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> It's not like Elon could make that much worse

Musk is swimming upstream, having notched the top-tick LBO of a decade-long ZIRP run.

With Twitter's original finances, in a strong economy, the debt would have been difficult. As currently configured, with ad revenue down 50% [1], it's obviously unsustainable, a reality reflected in its bonds' prices.

> he claims it's break-even now

Musk expected, last year, Twitter to break even this year [2]. He claimed break-even in April, but conceded profitability was still away [3], implying an unlevered definition of breaking even, i.e. before financing costs.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-c...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-expects-twitter...

[3] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-is-opera...

Money is the fluid within which innovation swims.

It is not, and will not be the point for Elon - he's clearly stated he does not care about money. There are goals beyond what the petty populace panders or bitches about. So again, your argument - while well formulated, is insignificant if the short-term losses support long-term heading changes.

What's your take on Amazon?

> insignificant if the short-term losses support long-term heading changes. What's your take on Amazon?

Amazon isn't levered to the hilt. It can choose its own time frames.

Leverage enforces an external horizon. It's unlikely Musk loses control of Twitter in bankruptcy--nobody wants it. But even if he "does not care about money," which is obviously untrue, he structures for himself and responds to monetary incentives, his lenders (and advertisers and employees and minority shareholders) do, and that's operational chaos for potentially months on end that adds zero value to Twitter or his brand.

> There are goals beyond what the petty populace panders or bitches about

Which are? And I'm asking about Twitter specifically not Tesla or SpaceX.

- Preserve and improve a common-square for all

- Maximize user-minute happiness

- Make Twitter a source of timely truth

> Twitter was only profitable for one year while it was public (2018). It's not like Elon could make that much worse.

That's like saying that because a company is profitable there is no room for improvement. There is a big difference between making $1 a year and making $1 billion a year, and same that there is a big difference between losing $1 a year and losing $1 billion a year.

> It's not like Elon could make that much worse.

It can absolutely get worse than running roughly break-even. If you have $4b in revenue and $4b in operating costs, and your lose half your revenue, you now have a hole that gets $2b deeper every year.

On top of that, the buyout added a $13b loan which has an annual minimum cost of $1b.

So he needs to increase profitability by a quarter of their previous annual revenue just to get back to where Twitter was pre-buyout.

> It's not like Elon could make that much worse

As if this scale were merely binary rather than a continuum.

> It's not like Elon could make that much worse

To be fair he could. Even ignoring everything else the interest alone on the debt alone he offloaded to Twitter during the acquisition is enough to finance the payroll of at least 1000-2000 additional employees (assuming total 600-300k cost per person and only 5% interest..). Which is why he had to fire so many people.

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