X marks the drop for Elon Musk's British business

How are things going for Mars coloniser, self-styled first buddy and walking midlife crisis Elon Musk at the UK arm of his social network X? Not great, according to the latest accounts.

The chainsaw-wielding entrepreneur’s cost-cutting at the increasingly toxic site saw both staff numbers and sales plummet during 2023 – Musk’s first full year in charge – according to new figures filed at Companies House.

Accounts for Twitter UK – as it is still registered with the authorities here, 19 months after its name change – saw its turnover fall by a whopping £136.2m in 2023, from £205.3m the previous year to £69.1m – the price of a promising Premier League midfielder. The number of staff employed in the UK dropped by more than 250 in the same period as Musk rid himself of such fripperies as moderators.

The company said in its business review that a “significant decrease in the performance of the company mainly pertains to the decline of advertising revenue primarily driven by a reduction in spend from large brand advertisers due to concerns about brand safety and/or content moderation”.

Musk’s wholesale cost-cutting saw 258 employees see their status change to ‘unemployed’, with research and development staff falling from 218 to 45, general and administrative staff from 29 to 10 and sales and marketing staff from 152 to 59. In total, the UK arm’s wage bill was slashed from £84.2m to £11.4m, although X did have to cough up £22.3m in redundancies.

In addition, the firm wrote down the value of its office improvements by £14.5m and spent £1.6m restoring its vacated offices to their original conditions, getting rid of £1.6m of fixtures and fittings, £505,000 in office equipment and £181,000 worth of desktop computers.

The figures were signed off by auditors PwC this month, seven months after their due date. A post-balance sheet note discloses the firm’s new control by X.Al Holdings Corp, Musk’s artificial intelligence division. That, perhaps, signals the new way forward for the devalued brand – although if Musk’s management of that is as hapless as his stewardship of Twitter, we’re probably safe for a few decades from the march of the robots.