Elon Musk Twitter account seen on Mobile with Elon Musk in the background on screen, seen in this photo illustration. On 19 February 2023 in Brussels, Belgium.
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Elon Musk says that Twitter is close to becoming cash-flow positive after making sharp layoffs and working to lure advertisers back to the platform.
“I’d say we’re roughly breakeven at this point,” Musk said Wednesday, during a live interview with the BBC recorded on Twitter Spaces.
Musk has pushed to make more money at Twitter to recoup his multibillion-dollar investment in the company. As part of this income-generation drive, Twitter has sought to make more money from subscriptions, charging users $8 a month to get access to Twitter verification marks and for the ability to edit tweets, among other features.
Musk said that Twitter will start removing blue checks from accounts without a subscription to the company’s paid Twitter Blue service next week.
During the interview, Musk said that “almost all” advertisers have resumed buying ads on the platform, after several hit pause on Twitter advertising following Musk’s acquisition of the app.
Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late October after a drawn-out legal battle with the company. He has since sought to radically overhaul the platform, including its content moderation policies.
“Depending on how things go, if current trends continue, I think we could be … cashflow-positive this quarter, if things keep going well,” Musk said.
Brands were concerned about the app failing to tackle hateful posts in the wake of the $44 billion deal, which was completed in October 2022. Musk styles himself as a “free speech absolutist” and says that he wants to encourage free expression on Twitter.
CNBC was not able to independently verify if most previous advertisers are returning to Twitter.
“Almost all of them… have… either come back or said they’re going to come back, there are very few exceptions,” Musk said.
When pressed by the BBC on which advertisers haven’t yet returned, Musk said: “I actually don’t know of anyone who said definitively they’re not coming back.”
“They’re all sort of trending to coming back. ‘Hey, jump in, the water is warm, it’s great,'” he added as his message to advertisers who had yet to return.
Representatives for Volkswagen, General Motors, Stellantis, which paused advertising on Twitter after Musk’s acquisition, were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Twitter, which erased its press department in a wave of layoffs this year, automatically responded to a CNBC request for comment with a poop emoji.
In December, advertising guru Maurice Levy told CNBC that Twitter was at a crossroads of “complete freedom” — which could result in either chaos or better oversight — and that most advertisers were in “wait and see” mode.
“I believe that if we are back to something more controlled, advertisers will get back to Twitter,” Levy, who is chairman of Publicis Groupe‘s supervisory board, told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed at the 2022 Conference de Paris.
‘Painful’ takeover
During the BBC interview, Musk said that the Twitter takeover process has been marked by an “extremely high” level of pain.
“It’s been really quite a stressful situation, you know, for the last several months,” he said. “It’s been quite painful, but I think… at the end of the day it should have been done.”
“Were there many mistakes made along the way? Of course. You know … all’s well that ends well.”
Twitter has slashed thousands of roles since the acquisition. Musk said that Twitter is now at roughly 1,500 employees, down from 8,000 when he took over.
The exchange came after Twitter added a label to the BBC’s Twitter account saying it was classed as “government-funded media.”
The BBC is largely funded by a license fee that British households must pay to watch BBC programs and all other TV channels. Musk said the platform will change the label to say “publicly-funded media” instead.
During the interview, he lambasted the media and said that he is under “constant attack.”
“The media is able to trash me on a regular basis in the U.S. and the U.K.,” he said.
Musk also falsely claims that Covid is “no longer an issue,” while the World Health Organization still classifies Covid as a pandemic.
– CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Karen Gilchrist contributed to this report
Anne Wojcicki attends the WSJ Magazine Style & Tech Dinner in Atherton, California, on March 15, 2023.
Kelly Sullivan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital have submitted a proposal to take the embattled genetic testing company private, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wojcicki and New Mountain have offered to acquire all of 23andMe’s outstanding shares in cash for $2.53 per share, or an equity value of approximately $74.7 million. The company’s stock closed at $2.42 on Friday with a market cap of about $65 million.
The offer comes after a turbulent year for 23andMe, with the stock losing more than 80% of its value in 2024. In January, the company announced plans to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
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23andMe has a special committee of independent directors in place to evaluate potential paths forward. The company appointed three new independent directors to its board in October after all seven of its previous directors abruptly resigned the prior month. The special committee has to approve Wojcicki and New Mountain’s proposal.
“We believe that our Proposal provides compelling value and immediate liquidity to the Company’s public stockholders,” Wojcicki and Matthew Holt, managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain, wrote in a letter to the special committee on Thursday.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.
Wojcicki and New Mountain are willing to provide secured debt financing to fund 23andMe’s operations through the transaction’s closing, the filing said. New Mountain is based in New York and has $55 billion of assets under management, according to its website.
Shares of Hims & Hers Health tumbled more than 23% on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the shortage of semaglutide injection products has been resolved.
Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Those medications are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1s, and demand for the treatments has exploded in recent years. As a result, digital health companies such as Hims & Hers have been prescribing compounded semaglutide as an alternative for patients who are navigating volatile supply hurdles and insurance obstacles.
Compounded drugs are custom-made alternatives to brand-name drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs, and compounders are allowed to produce them when brand-name treatments are in shortage. The FDA doesn’t review the safety and efficacy of compounded products.
Hims & Hers began offering compounded semaglutide to patients in May, and it owns compounding pharmacies that produce the medications.
Compounded medications are typically much cheaper than their branded counterparts. Hims & Hers sells compounded semaglutide for less than $200 per month, while Ozempic and Wegovy both cost around $1,000 per month without insurance.
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The FDA said Friday that it will start taking action against compounders for violations in the next 60 to 90 days, depending on the type of facility, in order to “avoid unnecessary disruption to patient treatment.”
“Now that the FDA has determined the drug shortage for semaglutide has been resolved, we will continue to offer access to personalized treatments as allowed by law to meet patient needs,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum posted Friday on X. “We’re also closely monitoring potential future shortages, as Novo Nordisk stated two weeks ago that it would continue to have ‘capacity limitations’ and ‘expected continued periodic supply constraints and related drug shortage notifications.'”
Him & Hers’ weight loss offerings have been a massive hit with investors. Shares of the company climbed more than 200% last year, and the stock is already up more than 100% this year despite Friday’s move.
Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, the company said in its 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025.
Despite the turbulent regulatory landscape, Hims & Hers has showed no signs of slowing down.
On Friday, the company announced it has acquired a U.S.-based peptide facility that will “further verticalize the company’s long-term ability to deliver personalized medications.” Hims & Hers will explore advances across metabolic optimization, recovery science, biological resistances, cognitive performance and preventative health through the acquisition, the company said.
That move comes just days after Hims & Hers also bought Trybe Labs, the New Jersey-based at-home lab testing facility. Trybe Labs will allow Hims & Hers to perform at-home blood draws and more comprehensive pretreatment testing.
Hims & Hers did not disclose the terms of either deal.
Tesla models Y and 3 are displayed at a Tesla dealership in Corte Madera, California, on Dec. 20, 2024.
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Tesla is voluntarily recalling 376,241vehicles in the U.S. to correct an issue with failing power-assisted steering systems, according to records posted to the website of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In a safety recall report posted on the NHTSA website, Tesla said the recall includes Model 3 and Model Y vehicles that were manufactured for sale in the U.S. from Feb. 28, 2023, to October 11, 2023, and that were equipped with a certain older software release.
The records said printed circuit boards in the steering systems in affected vehicles could become overstressed, causing the power-assist steering to fail in some cases when a Tesla vehicle rolled to a stop and then accelerated.
When electronic power-assist steering systems fail in a Tesla, drivers need to exert more force to steer their cars, which can increase the risk of a collision.
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Tesla told the vehicle safety regulator that it was not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to the power steering failures, and that it was offering an over-the-air software update as a remedy.
The recall follows an earlier related probe and voluntary recall in China concerning the same systems.
President Donald Trump has appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a team that is slashing the federal government workforce, and in some cases, regulations and entire agencies. Those cuts already affected the NHTSA, an agency Musk has long seen as standing in the way of some of his ambitions at Tesla.
The regulator has been engaged in a yearslong investigation into safety defects in the systems that Tesla markets currently as its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) options. The features do not make Tesla cars into robotaxis. They require a human driver ready to steer or brake at any time.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk’s team has led mass firings at the NHTSA, reducing the agency’s workforce and capacity to investigate companies including Tesla by about 10%.