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Inside Elon Musk’s Big Plans for Twitter

Here’s what Mr. Musk is projecting for Twitter’s finances over the next few years, according to a pitch deck he presented to investors.

Elon Musk has in recent days distributed a pitch deck to investors outlining his grand plans for Twitter.Credit...Joe Skipper/Reuters

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Elon Musk has never been accused of dreaming small. He has reinvented at least two industries with Tesla, his electronic vehicle company, and SpaceX, the rocket company — and now his ambitions are carrying over to his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, has presented a pitch deck to investors in recent days outlining his grand — some might say incredible — plans for Twitter and its financial targets. The New York Times obtained the presentation. Here’s a peek into what Mr. Musk sees for the social media service in the years ahead.

In his pitch deck, Mr. Musk claimed he would increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year.

Under Mr. Musk, advertising would fall to 45 percent of total revenue, down from around 90 percent in 2020. In 2028, advertising would generate $12 billion in revenue and subscriptions nearly $10 billion, according to the document. Other revenue would come from businesses such as data licensing.

Twitter would bring in $15 million from a payments business in 2023, according to the document, which would grow to about $1.3 billion by 2028. The company’s payments business today, which includes tipping and shopping, is negligible. There has been speculation that Mr. Musk may introduce payment abilities to Twitter given that he helped popularize PayPal, the digital payments service.

With all of these changes, Mr. Musk anticipates he can lift Twitter’s average revenue per user — a key metric for social media companies — to $30.22 in 2028 from $24.83 last year, according to the document.

Mr. Musk anticipates Twitter’s total number of users will grow from 217 million at the end of last year to nearly 600 million in 2025 and 931 million six years from now. Most of that growth will come from Twitter’s ad-supported business, including Twitter Blue, for which users pay $3 a month to customize their experience on the app. According to the pitch deck, Mr. Musk expects 69 million users of Twitter Blue by 2025 and 159 million in 2028.

Included in Mr. Musk’s total user estimates are what appear to be subscribers to a new product called X, which would have 104 million users in 2028, according to the document. The document did not detail what X Subscribers was, but Mr. Musk has hinted at introducing an ad-free experience on Twitter. The X Subscribers product shows up on the pitch deck in 2023, with nine million users expected in its first year.

By 2025, Mr. Musk anticipates Twitter will have 11,072 employees, according to the document. That would be up from around 7,500 today.

But in between, Mr. Musk expects the number to fluctuate, rising to 9,225 employees in 2022, then declining to 8,332 in 2023 before increasing again. Mr. Musk is likely to shed workers as part of his takeover, before bringing on new talent in engineering, a person with knowledge of the situation said. Stock-based compensation costs are also expected to rise to just over $3 billion by 2028, from $914 million in 2022.

Twitter will add about $13 billion of debt as part of Mr. Musk’s buyout plan. But he expects to pay that debt down as free cash flow — a measure of how much money a company has to service its debt — is set to grow to $3.2 billion in 2025 and $9.4 billion in 2028, according to the pitch deck. Free cash flow would rise even as operating expenses and costs also rose, according to the document.

A correction was made on 
May 6, 2022

An earlier version of this article misstated two parts of Elon Musk’s pitch deck. Mr. Musk expects Twitter Blue to have 69 million users, not $69 million in revenue, by 2025. It is also not the case that X Subscribers is expected to bring in $47 million in revenue by 2025.

How we handle corrections

Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent and the author of “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” a best-selling book on the dramatic rise and fall of the ride-hailing company. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley, and is based in San Francisco. More about Mike Isaac

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering business, policy and mergers and acquisitions. Ms. Hirsch studied comparative literature at Cornell University and has an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. More about Lauren Hirsch

Anupreeta Das is the finance editor of The New York Times, overseeing broad coverage of Wall Street, including banking, investing, markets and consumer finance. She was previously the deputy business editor of The Wall Street Journal. More about Anupreeta Das

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Blueprint Of Big Goals From Musk. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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