Audio file

Elon Musk tells BBC about 'painful' Twitter takeover in exclusive interview - BBC News.mp4

Transcript
00:00:00 Anchor

So let's get down to business and we start with the exclusive interview that took place in
San Francisco between Elon Musk and our technology correspondent, James Clayton. It is
one of his first interviews since he bought Twitter for $44 billion. He defended his decision
to lay off a massive number of staff saying that.

00:00:20 Anchor

Twitter only had four months to live in. Less drastic measures were taken.

00:00:26 Speaker 2

In in rough numbers, revenue dropped from 4 1/2 billion to three.

00:00:33 Speaker 2

And expenses went from 4 1/2 to 6, creating a $3 billion negative cash flow situation.

00:00:42 Speaker 2

And Twitter having a billion dollars in the.

00:00:43 Speaker 2

Bank. That's four months to live.

00:00:46 Speaker 2

So unless drastic action was taken immediately, this company is going to die and.

00:00:49 Speaker 2

Be owned by banks.

00:00:49 Elon Musk

Well, let's talk about that drastic action, because almost immediately you sacked a lot of
Twitter workers. Yeah, and I spoke to them, it's very easy to speak.

00:00:59 Elon Musk

To them, when it happened and and the way they said pretty much everyone said is is that
it felt quite haphazard and it felt a little bit.

00:01:06 Speaker 2

It was.

00:01:07 Elon Musk

Uncaring do you? Do you do, do you?

00:01:09 Speaker 2

I wouldn't say uncaring the, the, the. You know the issue is like the companies that go
bankrupt or if if we do not cut costs immediately, this is not a caring, uncaring situation. It's
like if all ship sinks, then nobody.

00:01:24 Speaker 2

'S going to drop.

00:01:26 Elon Musk

Right. Yeah. But a lot of people just lost their jobs like that.

00:01:31 Elon Musk

And and and they they weren't. They didn't even know they were. They were. They lost their
jobs off and they just were just they were just frozen out of their accounts.

00:01:36 Speaker 2

OK. So let me ask you, what would you do?

00:01:39 Elon Musk

Well, you might want to give someone some notice. I mean, you might. It's, by the way, I I'm
not running Twitter, but this is this is the criticism and this is what actual this is what staff
members say. A little bit of notice, you know.

00:01:49 Speaker 2

Now I understand if you're four months to live.

00:01:53 Speaker 2

120 days and 120 days are dead.

00:01:56 Speaker 2

So how what do?

00:01:57 Speaker 2

You want to do.

00:01:57 Elon Musk

How much you worth?

00:02:01 Speaker 2

I don't know.

00:02:02 Elon Musk

But I mean, we're talking about around the $200 billion mark. I mean, it's not quite you're
framing it in in a way that that you know that it had a had a few months to live. You're quite
a rich man.

00:02:13 Speaker 2

I sold a lot of Tesla stock to close the deal. I did not want to sell the Tesla stock.

00:02:21 Anchor

In what was quite a lengthy interview, Elon Musk also said he is confident that the social
media platform Twitter will become profitable again and advertisers will return. Let's have
a listen to this.

00:02:36 Elon Musk

In terms of advertising, obviously it's the Twitter is not a private company anymore. So we
don't really know how it's how it's all going have.

00:02:41 Elon Musk

All the advertisers come back.

00:02:44 Speaker 2

Not all, but most.

00:02:46 Elon Musk

And it's.

00:02:47 Speaker 2

You can see it for yourself on Twitter, even in the four.

00:02:49 Speaker 2

You feed.

00:02:50 Elon Musk

Right in the following trade.

00:02:50 Speaker 2

I mean in the sorry phone.

00:02:52 Speaker 2

You don't use for you because it sucks rightly.

00:02:57 Speaker 2

Little with hate speech. I'm talk.

00:03:00 Speaker 2

That's not what I said. OK, well, why don't you use for you? What's wrong with it?

00:03:05 Elon Musk

How is it going? Is is Twitter in profit now?

00:03:08 Speaker 2

You know Twitter is rough. I'd say we're roughly break even at this point.

00:03:15 Elon Musk

And I think you've said before you you see a you see a world where.

00:03:18 Elon Musk

You could be in.

00:03:18 Elon Musk

Profit. Is there a timeline on that?

00:03:21 Elon Musk

Do you think I mean?

00:03:24 Speaker 2

Depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be profitable or I
mean say could be more precise, we could be cash flow positive this quarter if things keep
going well.

00:03:38 Elon Musk

This quarter, as soon as that.

00:03:40 Speaker 2

Possibly, yeah.

00:03:41 Elon Musk

Well, and do you have a message for the advertiser? I mean, can you say?

00:03:45 Elon Musk

Which advertisers haven't come.

00:03:46 Speaker 2

Back and I think I think almost all of them have are either come back or said they're going to
come back. They're very few exceptions.

00:03:55 Elon Musk

Can you say any of the exceptions?

00:04:00 Speaker 2

I actually don't know of anyone who said definitively they're not coming back, but they're all
sort of trending towards coming back. I'm not being the waters warm. It's great.

00:04:05 Elon Musk

But there are some that just happen.

00:04:09 Elon Musk

What's your message to the advertisers haven't come back?

00:04:11 Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean.

00:04:12 Speaker 2

Look, you know if if if Disney feels comfortable advertising their children's movies and
Apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones, those are good indicators that Twitter is a
good place to advertise.

00:04:31 Elon Musk

I want to talk about if you have any regrets, regrets and and, you know, I think you were
Buddha at Dave Chappelle concert. I think your.

00:04:39 Elon Musk

Own lawyers, little a little. A little well.

00:04:43 Elon Musk

Some say a little, some say a bit more. I think your own lawyer said you couldn't get a fair
trial in San Francisco because there are lots of people that that don't necessarily like you
here.

00:04:51 Speaker 2

Yeah, but you know, I have to say it. I was wrong. He was wrong. I guess because I was
acquitted by the San Francisco jury unanimously.

00:05:06 Elon Musk

But I guess, but look do.

00:05:07

At that.

00:05:07 Elon Musk

Do do do you have any regrets about buying Twitter?

00:05:11 Speaker 2

I think it was something that needed to be done.

00:05:15 Elon Musk

I mean, so you said.

00:05:16 Speaker 2
It's difficult, you know, it's I'd say the like the the pain level of Twitter has been extremely
high. There hasn't been some sort of party. So it's been really quite a stressful situation.
You know, for the last several months not.

00:05:34 Speaker 2

Not an easy one.

00:05:36 Speaker 2

But apart from the pain, I mean, so it's been quite painful, but I think.

00:05:41 Speaker 2

At the end of the day, it should have been done. I think tonight, were there many mistakes
made along the way? Of course, you know and.

00:05:50 Speaker 2

But you know, all's.

00:05:52 Speaker 2

Well, that ends well and so I.

00:05:53 Speaker 2

Feel like we're headed?

00:05:57 Speaker 2

To a good place. You know, we're roughly break even. I think we're trending towards being
half low positive very soon. Like literally in a matter of of of months, the advertisers are
returning the I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly and
we've taken a lot of feedback from.

00:06:16 Speaker 2

People that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we've we've
made a lot of improvements even even since that was made open source and we're going
to.

00:06:27 Speaker 2

Keep doing that so.

00:06:29 Speaker 2
Well, I think the trend is very good, so.

00:06:33 Anchor

Well, let's unpack this further with our business reporter Gerard de Silva, who joins us from
our Bureau in Singapore. Joel, it was an extraordinary conversation. You and I were both
watching it live. You in our Bureau in Singapore, me in the studio here in London. He, he,
he. He had so much to say about so many things. But when it comes to Twitter itself and
the business.

00:06:53 Anchor

He does sound confident. He he is telling us all we'll be back in profit soon and advertisers
will be back.

00:07:02 Speaker 4

Well, we'll have to wait and see, but Elon Musk did sound very a bit in that interview. He
talked about daily usage being up, and yes, the company finally breaking even now that
According to him, advertisers are back, he told J.

00:07:16 Speaker 4

At one point, how the situation was bleak when he first took over, accused the previous
management of running it as a non profit, saying that the company had only in his own
words, a few months to live. And he said that like other Internet companies, Twitter was
facing a massive drop in revenue, all of that to justify.

00:07:36 Speaker 4

Those controversial mass layoffs that we saw at Twitter earlier this year, he admitted that
the headcount has gone from 8000 to 1500. Under his leadership. The thing is, many
analysts are saying that that that mad medicine might actually be the poison that's hurting
Twitter many people.

00:07:57 Speaker 4

In the content moderation team have been fired and advertisers fear that increase that
increase the.

00:08:03 Speaker 4

Likelihood that their products will appear next to toxic content on the platform and we do
know that major advertisers like Volkswagen, like General Motors did, did pause their
relationship with Twitter earlier this year. So we'll have to really wait and see whether
indeed Musk has reason to be optimistic about Twitter's.

00:08:24 Anchor

OK, Joe, thank you very much. Geralda Silva in Singapore just to say online, you can see
and read more about that exclusive interview, you can listen and watch at your leisure as
and wish. So that's BBC online. But also the news app as well. So do take a look.