Twitter has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since being bought by Elon Musk for $44 billion ($33.6 billion) last October, its owner has revealed.
He said the company did not see the sales growth it had expected in June, but added that July was somewhat more promising.
Mr Musk laid off half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff in 2022 in an effort to cut costs.
By some estimates, rival app Threads now has 150 million users.
Its internal connection with Instagram automatically gives the meta-designed platform access to a potential two billion users.
Meanwhile, Twitter is struggling under a heavy debt load. Cash flow remains negative, Mr. Musk said over the weekend, though the billionaire did not put a timeframe on a 50 percent drop in ad revenue.
In a tweet he said: “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”
After laying off thousands of employees and slashing cloud service bills, Mr Musk said Twitter was on track to post revenue of $3bn (£2.29bn) in 2023, down from $5.1bn in 2021.
The development is the latest sign that aggressive cost-cutting measures are not enough to spark the return of advertisers who fled after changes to its content moderation rules.
Despite an interview Mr Musk gave in April, he suggested most had returned to the site.
However, Meghana Dhar, the former head of partnerships at Snap and Meta, which owns new Twitter rival Threads, said the company was struggling before Mr Musk’s purchase.
“Elon and Twitter are clearly in a tough position at the moment,” he told JEE News. “Though to be fair to Elon, we’ve seen the decline in Twitter revenue and the increase in revenue before Elon — kind of a steady decline.”
Lucy Coutts, director of investments at JM Finn, said: “You wouldn’t bet against him, he’s kind of a charming character and I think he’ll probably turn it around but it’s going to take a long time.
“But unfortunately he has $13 billion in debt to pay off by the end of July so if he has to sell more of his shares in the company, we could see more pressure on Tesla shares.”
Mr Musk is also the chief executive and majority shareholder of electric car maker Tesla, which will report its latest quarterly financial results on Wednesday.
Linda Yaccarino, formerly the head of advertising at NBC Universal, was hired as Twitter’s chief executive in June — a move that suggests selling ads is still a priority for the company.
Ms Yaccarino has said Twitter plans to focus on video, creator and commercial partnerships. It is said to be in early talks with political and entertainment figures, payment services, and news and media publishers.
