Elon Musk’s financial targets for a private Twitter border on absurd, contends one long-time tech analyst who covers the social media platform.
“We see a very low probability of Twitter achieving Elon Musk’s reported targets,” Jefferies’ Brent Thill stated in a note to clients.
The New York Times obtained Elon’s pitch-deck for Twitter, and it’s solid fodder.
Musk has a vision to quintuple Twitter’s sales to $26.4 billion by 2028 on a user base of 931 million (compared to 217 million to end last year). Twitter would haul in $1.3 billion from a not-yet-released payments business by 2028, up from $15 million in 2023. Musk also aims to have 11,072 employees at Twitter by 2025 compared to about 7,500 today.
Thill declared shenanigans on the projections.
“We note that Twitter has never grown at a 27%+ revenue CAGR [compound annual growth rate] with a comparable [revenue] base,” Thill explained, adding that “Musk’s reported ambitions to switch to an ad and subscription model would likely pose a significant rev headwind and make it difficult to achieve these targets.”
