this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023

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'Heavy debt': Elon Musk says Twitter cash flow negative after ad revenue declines (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 3 years ago* by kuontom@kbin.social to c/tech@kbin.social

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Musk said early Saturday that cash flow at Twitter remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue coupled with "heavy debt."

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[–] nicetriangle@kbin.social 38 points 3 years ago

[–] Jarmer@kbin.social 35 points 3 years ago

Hmmmmm I wonder where all that heavy debt came from? Chin scratch I wonder why all the companies don't want to advertise here anymore? NOBODY KNOWS!!!

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 years ago (3 children)

I'm amazed people still drive and ride in Teslas after seeing how badly this guy runs a social media site.

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[–] Catch42@kbin.social 6 points 3 years ago (5 children)

Well, Tesla is publicly traded, makes money, and clearly their cars work because they have lower than average road fatalities. With the disparity of how badly Twitter's being run vs Tesla I wonder how long it's been since Elon's actually been in charge of anything other than being a spokesperson for Tesla.

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[–] Hypx@kbin.social 7 points 3 years ago (2 children)

@kuontom @const_void

No one really knows if Tesla makes money. It's been long noticed that Musk is extremely dishonest and could easily be faking all of the numbers.

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

It's a public company, there are legal requirements for reporting its cash flows to its shareholders. If they're being fudged to that degree then that's massive fraud and Musk would be in very serious legal trouble.

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[–] Hypx@kbin.social 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

@kuontom @const_void @Catch42

We live in the age of fraud. It's easy to fake those numbers. Hell, the regulations will even help you defraud investors. In fact, you should google Wirecard as an example of this, and realize it could totally happen again. Also, look at how rich Musk already is and realize he has already gotten away with it. Legal trouble just means he may retire in slightly less comfort than he would've anyways.

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[–] SaltySalamander@kbin.social 4 points 3 years ago

Don't understand how public companies work, do ya?

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[–] Nioxic@lemmy.world 6 points 3 years ago (2 children)

They are among the most unreliable cars.. lol

And fewest fatalities because they are not selling as well as a honda civic..

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[–] tikitaki@kbin.social 4 points 3 years ago

fatalities statistics are based on % not absolute number

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[–] Dr_Cog@mander.xyz 1 point 3 years ago

Exactly. If I start a brand of cars that explode as soon as you turn the ignition but only sell one, suddenly my brand has the fewest fatalities.

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[–] binaryphile@kbin.social 6 points 3 years ago

To be fair, they've got the killed-or-injured-by-a-software-driven-vehicle market virtually cornered.

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[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

they have lower than average road fatalities

Are you sure about that?

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[–] Catch42@kbin.social 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

Yes, because rising road fatalities and having lower than average road fatalities are not mutually exclusive. Radar-era autopilot was incredibly safe, so even though Elon made the stupid decision to make it vision-based which has caused fatalities to go up, they're still below average. You can check NHTSA's ratings just type in Tesla in the search bar and you'll see that they've gotten a 5 star rating on every car in every category.

Of course if you look at Tesla's own data they claim to the orders of magnitude safer, which I'm sure is only possible with some creative data manipulation, but it's silly to claim that Tesla's are less safe than average.

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[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

The NHSTA ratings are based on crash tests. Not real world accident statistics.

You didn't read your own link but did you read the article I linked to (and ideally the WaPo article it links to, for more detail)?

If so, I ask again, are you sure about that?.

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[–] Catch42@kbin.social 1 point 3 years ago* (1 child)

I read both articles you have linked to, I don't think either of them contradict what I said. Both articles point out that Tesla dominate automation related accidents, which makes sense because Tesla has a far greater number of automation equipped cars on the road than other manufacturers. Furthermore they point out that those accidents have risen dramatically over the past few years. If you look at the graph on the WaPo article you linked to you'll see it's in agreement with what I said since Tesla switched to vision based systems in mid 2021.

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[–] jocanib@lemmy.world 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

Both articles point out that it is not possible to calculate because Tesla is withholding some of the necessary data (and has asked the NHSTA to redact the rest).

The WaPo gets closest to naming all the data you would need (miles driven in FSD; type of road being driven on) but you'd also need to match it to the Tesla owner demographic (wealthy, white, middle-aged men), and cars with an NHSTA 5 rating for structural safety.

I have no doubt that most of the autopilot miles driven are in Teslas, thanks to Musk's reckess promotion of it as FSD.

To know whether the technology fails more or less often than other autopilot systems, you would need data that Tesla are withholding, and much more detailed data on other cars than you can google up on the NHSTA website.

Which is why I asked if you were sure.

Because I don't think you can possibly be sure. But you say you are, so say why you're sure.

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[–] Catch42@kbin.social 2 points 3 years ago

Ah, I misunderstood what you were asking; No I am not sure. I made my assessment based on what is available. If I'm proven wrong when Tesla either releases the data or more likely is forced to release the data by NHTSA, then I will stand corrected.

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[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 1 point 3 years ago

Lower fatalities is a function of the driver type, not of the car.

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[–] communist@beehaw.org 5 points 3 years ago

I trust his companies when I know the engineers don't let him have any say whatsoever.

Neuralink and spacex are interesting to watch, because how badly could he fuck them up in a way that engineers will let him? Not much.

Tesla is just on the edge of being fucked up by him, his weird yoke and insistence on capacitive buttons are very close to being too much... but the thing that made me finally decide not to ever get a tesla was his insistence on using exclusively cameras instead of cameras+radar for autopilot.

If you don't care about self-driving, and don't care about the yoke/capacitive buttons, teslas are fine cars.

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

I don't see how a social media site and an automobile company have much in common.

It's quite possible that Musk is better at some things than he is at other things. Engineering and manufacturing are quite different from maintaining a large social media company, the skills don't translate.

Another major difference is that Musk built Tesla up from a small size, so it was always structured according to his style and expectations of management, whereas he bought Twitter as an already-large company with an established corporate culture that didn't match what he would have done. That's the first time he's bought such a large pre-existing company, as far as I'm aware, and he's having huge problems "reshaping" it.

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[–] Hypx@kbin.social 6 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

@kuontom @const_void Bullshit. He did not found Tesla. And Tesla gets many billions of dollars of subsidies, something you can't do with Twitter. It's easy to imagine how Musk mismanaged Tesla just as badly as Twitter now, but with the advantage of the government saving him back then. Also, with ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) by the Feds, you can borrow money at basically zero cost anytime you want. You can string along a disastrous mismanaged company for years in that scenario.

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

As I said:

Another major difference is that Musk built Tesla up from a small size,

Emphasis added. From Tesla's Wikipedia page:

Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, Elon Musk became the company's largest shareholder.

Given the current size of Tesla, being able to buy a majority share of it for a mere $6.5 million clearly makes it a very small company by comparison.

Also, with ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) by the Feds, you can borrow money at basically zero cost anytime you want. You can string along a disastrous mismanaged company for years in that scenario.

Why do any companies go broke, in that case?

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[–] Hypx@kbin.social 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

@kuontom @const_void

It is still a small company. It the size of Mazda just with way more hype and more funding. It is still consistent with the idea that he stole the company and just turned it into his plaything, funded primarily with other people's money.

Almost no companies went broke in the last decade or so. Only the most incompetent companies have really failed recently, with the occasional bank failure here and there. But that will change eventually. All frauds eventually go bust. And if Tesla is one of them, it will happen sooner or later.

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

Mazda is a "small company?" Ok.

Plenty of companies have been going broke in the past decade.

If Musk's companies are small I don't see why everyone's so obsessed with him.

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[–] Hypx@kbin.social 2 points 3 years ago

@kuontom @const_void

2023 is the beginning of the end of ZIRP. Of course starting now, a lot of companies are going bankrupt. But that hasn't reached Tesla yet.

Also, who goes around thinking Mazda is this huge company? Sure, it is a not as small as say, a startup company, but it is still consider small.

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[–] wnose@kbin.social 13 points 3 years ago (1 child)

I wonder if you built a bonfire of $100 dollar bills, how tall would $44 billion look like?

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[–] axtualdave@lemmy.world 12 points 3 years ago (3 children)

29ish miles.

A single bill of US currency is 0.0043 inches thick.

$44bil in $100 bills is 1,892,000 inches, which comes out to 29.861 miles.

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[–] SaltySalamander@kbin.social 3 points 3 years ago

That's a stack, not a pile.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

/c/TheyDidTheMath ?

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[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 5 points 3 years ago

There was a Reddit post where they figured out how much money the Joker burned in the Dark Knight, and it was roughly 6.5 billion dollars.

So 44 billion would be about 7 times that much.

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[–] JimmyJr@lemmy.world 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

In 50s that's 59.7 miles, or just 3 miles shy of the von karman line which marks the edge of outerspace

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[–] Deleted@kbin.social 1 point 3 years ago

in 1s it's about 2986 miles which is more than enough to go coast to coast.

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[–] macrocephalic@lemmy.fmhy.ml 13 points 3 years ago (1 child)

Cash flow at twitter remains negative because I don't understand the business.

FIFY Elmo.

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[–] Kata1yst@kbin.social 1 point 3 years ago

And can't trust that others might be smarter than him.

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[–] Zeppo@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 years ago

That’s very insightful! Brilliant. Nobody could have predicted this.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 9 points 3 years ago

And he is personally responsible for both of those things.

[–] xuxebiko@kbin.social 8 points 3 years ago*

Is that longated moskowrat speak for " That's why I won't paying my twitter employees their wages."

[–] Waldhuette@lemmy.world 8 points 3 years ago

Finally some good news today /s

[–] relative_iterator@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 years ago

I think the main reason cash flow is negative is because he’s a dumb dumb

[–] xc2215x@kbin.social 6 points 3 years ago

Not a shock since Elon has made the site worse.

[–] kunic@kbin.social 5 points 3 years ago

No shit lol

[–] Bookmeat@lemmy.world 2 points 3 years ago

If you want to pile on, browse Twitter in Firefox with an ad blocker (even on mobile). Still works great, but no ads!

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