Elon Musk to start mass layoffs at Twitter on Friday
The move comes as Musk attempts to improve Twitter’s consistently unimpressive margins following his $44 billion acquisition of the firm. Musk, who says he overpaid for Twitter, has already made significant changes to the business that he first attempted to wriggle out of buying. Shortly after taking over, Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and legal policy head Vijaya Gadde.
The executives were reportedly fired for cause, though Musk hasn’t publicly accused the executives of any wrongdoing. According to Business Insider, the Tesla (US.TSLA) CEO hopes to avoid making the executives’ contractually binding golden parachute payments that would cost the company tens of millions of dollars.
The mercurial billionaire has few choices but to turn Twitter’s fortunes around if he wants to pay off its $13 billion in debt, which is estimated to cost approximately $1 billion a year.
In its last quarter as a public company, Twitter reported a revenue decline of 1% year-over-year to $1.18 billion.
The social media company also reported a net loss of $270 million representing a 23% net margin decrease. Costs and expenses, meanwhile, totaled $1.52 billion, a 31% year-over-year jump.