Linda Yaccarino Predicts X Will Be Profitable in 2024
Despite a recent and highly tumultuous change in ownership, the social media platform now known as X will turn a profit in 2024, CEO Linda Yaccarino predicts.
“Now that I have immersed myself in the business, and we have a good set of eyes on what is predictable, what’s coming is that it looks like in early ’24, we will be turning a profit,” Yaccarino said at the Code Conference Wednesday, TechCrunch reported.
It’s not the first time she’s predicted that the company will be in the black since she left NBCUniversal to take the top job at what was then Twitter in May. In a CNBC appearance in August, she said that X was “pretty close to break-even” as advertisers were returning to the platform.
On stage at the Code Conference, where her appearance was partly upstaged by the former head of Twitter’s trust and safety department Yoel Roth , who spoke before her, Yaccarino suggested the platform has resovled its problems drawing advertising, stating, “90% of the top 100 advertisers have returned to the platform in the last twelve weeks alone.”
If true, those gains came amid X owner Elon Musk’s complaints earlier this month that criticism from anti-hate groups has led to a 60% drop in domestic advertising revenue since he bought the platform in October.
In its last quarterly report before Musk took the company private, Twitter reported a loss of $270 million.
Since the company’s financials are no longer public, it’s difficult to assess any claims of profitability. It is clear, however, that X has dramatically reduced expenses by slashing staff through multiple rounds of layoffs, reducing headcount to about 1.500 from more than 7,500.
Some spending cuts have created problems, however, including laid-off workers who sued, claiming they did not receive their promised severance pay, with mediation for the case scheduled for December; and charges that the company failed to pay rent on several of its offices.
Yaccarino said at the conference that one key metric — the time users spend on X — rose over the summer months, a claim interviewer Julia Boorstin of CNBC questioned, citing data from app analytics firm Apptopia, TechCrunch reported.
Recent reports suggest X downloads are down roughly 30% in the two months after its rebrand from Twitter, TechCrunch noted. Apptopia also reported decreased web traffic to X, and lower user numbers since before Twitter went public.
The post Linda Yaccarino Predicts X Will Be Profitable in 2024 appeared first on TheWrap.
