X has posted a higher revenue result for Q3, with the platform projected to bring in $2.9 billion for the full year, which would represent a 10% rise on its 2024 result.
Which means that despite the negative press, and the backlash prompted by Elon Musk’s controversial changes at the app, advertisers are returning. Or X is gaining a lot more X Premium subscribers, though user subscriptions still only contribute a small fraction of the platform’s overall intake.
As reported by Bloomberg:
“The company, formerly known as Twitter, reported $752 million in revenue in the three-month period ended Sept. 30, a jump of more than 17% from the same period one year prior, according to people briefed on the numbers who declined to be identified as the details are private. Sales at X are over $2 billion for the first nine months of the year, according to the people.”
X’s Q3 results are an improvement on Q2, in which the company generated $707 million, a 2.2% drop on its Q1 figures.
So X’s sales numbers are climbing, not in a major way, but they are increasing, which suggests that more advertisers are coming back to the app.
Though, for context, it is worth noting that X’s $2.9 billion projected result for 2025 is still well below what Twitter was making before Elon Musk took over at the app.
In 2022, the final year before Elon took over at the app, Twitter generated $4.4 billion in revenue, predominantly through advertising. In 2023, Musk’s first year at the company, that declined to around $3.4 billion, which then dropped to $2.6 billion in total net revenue last year.
So X’s revenue intake has been in steady decline. Which makes its projections for 2025 a positive, but Musk’s changes to the platform have still cut its revenue results by 35%, if it does hit that projected $2.9 billion total.
And with Elon also saddling the business with additional debt servicing costs (around $1.2 billion annually), along with its operating expenses, the platform still remains close to break even, and is nowhere near Musk’s original forecasts that he pitched to potential investors when he bought Twitter. In his initial pitch deck, Musk forecast that, under his leadership, the company would be bringing in $26.4 billion in total revenue by 2028.
But X has seemingly recovered somewhat from the initial backlash against Elon’s changes at the app, and while it is now facing more significant competition from Meta’s Threads, the numbers show that X remains a viable business, and could continue to grow into the future.
Though its own revenue results are somewhat less relevant than they were, in broader context, now that X and xAI have merged, with the latter valuing X as its key data pool to fuel Musk’s Grok AI tools.
Because of this merger, X, the platform, can now share funding with xAI, and with xAI reportedly seeking a new $15 billion funding round, at a valuation of $230 billion, X’s own intake is no longer the only support available for the app.
Of course, Elon will still want X to stand on its own, and X continues to push things like X Premium subscriptions to boost its numbers. But if X is being propped up by xAI, which, for some reason, is viewed as a $200 billion+ project, X’s own cash squeeze is less of an existential concern for the app.
So, really, you’re looking at X and xAI as a bigger package, with X essentially built into the xAI valuation and funding. Which could give Elon more freedom to loosen the content rules on X, because it no longer needs to adhere to advertiser preferences.
I mean, he’s pretty much done that anyway, which is why X has lost 35% of its ad intake. But if xAI is indeed valued at $230 billion, and these are a fully merged entity, then Elon may have even more freedom to change up X however he likes, without concerns about ongoing revenue impacts.
That clearly hasn’t changed his approach as yet, as X is still working to improve its ad market position. And these latest numbers show that X is clearly getting at least some things right, as it slowly boosts its revenue back up to pre-Elon levels.
