Twitter owner Elon Musk revealed the company has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since he bought it in October 2022, leaving it grappling with negative cash flow and heavy debt.

Musk made the admission in a tweet and followed up by stating an expected rise during June had failed to materialise, but the outlook this month is better.

Its Spaces discussion board offering is also not generating revenue, being “all costs” at this stage, he added.

Musk apparently recently stated Twitter is on track to post revenue of $3 billion in 2023, compared with $4.4 billion in 2022 and $5.1 billion in 2021.

In his nine months in charge, Musk has made several moves to improve the company’s financial situation, including laying-off thousands of staff and cutting cloud service bills.

During an interview with BBC News in April, Musk reportedly said things were going “reasonably well” and Twitter was roughly breaking even following the return of most advertisers.

Twitter is also facing increased competition, with freshly-minted rival Threads from Meta Platforms reportedly amassing more than 150 million users since launching earlier this month.