Profits and revenues at the UK operations of Elon Musk’s social platform X plummeted in the year after he took it over, new accounts have revealed..
Latest financial results from Twitter UK Ltd, filed with Companies House, this week, show that revenues collapsed by two thirds to £69.1 million in 2023.
Pre-tax profits were 74% lower at £2.25 million.
The Tesla billionaire launched a $44 billion takeover of Twitter in April 2022 with, he claimed, a mission to restore “free speech” to the platform.
The takeover was completed by October 2022 and Twitter was rebranded to X in July 2023. It has increasingly become a vehicle for Musk’s outspoken support for President Trump.
The accounts show how most of the UK staff were laid off as Musk’s team launched a massive cost cutting and job reduction campaign.
The number of UK staff was slashed by more than two thirds from 399 to 114 in 2023, reducing the total wage bill from £84.1 million to just £11.4 million.
Twitter has its UK headquarters at Air Street in the West End.
The company said that since the takeover it has “taken significant steps to reduce its cost base and improve its financial performance, including workforce reduction” with redundancy costs totalling £22.3 million by the end of 2023.
The statement added that “the significant decrease in the performance of the company mainly pertains to the decline of advertising revenue primarily driven by a reduction in spend from large brand advertisers due to concerns about brand safety and/or content moderation.
“The business continues to take corrective measures to build brand safety tools, invest in platform safety and content moderation and then educate advertisers about these initiatives.”
