Twitter blames Elon Musk for $270 mn loss in Q2 results

San Francisco, July 22

Twitter on Friday said it posted $270 million net loss in the second quarter (Q2), largely owing to uncertainty related to the pending acquisition by Tesla CEO Elon Musk that adversely hit its advertising business.

Musk has terminated the $44 billion Twitter deal over the presence of bots on the platform and Twitter has sued him for cancelling the deal, with the trial now set for October in a US court.

In its Q2 earnings, Twitter said that its Q2 revenue totaled $1.18 billion, a decrease of 1 per cent year-over-year, "reflecting advertising industry headwinds associated with the macroenvironment as well as uncertainty related to the pending acquisition of Twitter by an affiliate of Musk".

When excluding MoPub and MoPub Acquire, year-over-year growth was 3 per cent, it added.

Twitter's ad revenue totaled $1.08 billion, and subscription and other revenue totalled $101 million.

The Q2 average monetizable daily active usage (mDAU) was 237.8 million, up 16.6 per cent compared to Q2 of the prior year.

The increase was driven by ongoing product improvements and global conversation around current events, said Twitter.

The company said that given the pending acquisition of Twitter by Musk, "we will not host an earnings conference call, issue a shareholder letter, or provide financial guidancea.