As owner Elon Musk continues his dangerous support for Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, X itself remains in a tight financial position, set to post a huge loss in 2024, even potentially ending up bankrupt, the former bird app.

But going by the result of that November poll, I think Elon might find his way out of this.

Internal documents have X poised to bring in around $2.9 billion in total revenue for 2024, with nearly 90% of that coming from ad sales alone- Elon still had high hopes it would constitute a great majority of X's take via subscriptions for X Premium.

According to data from Appfigures and estimates by TechCrunch, X currently has 1.3 million paying users, or 0.26% of its total user base. That is estimated to earn $14.7 million per month for the company, or $176.4 million per year. Which is a pretty substantial amount of money, of course, but that only adds up to around 6% of the business' total revenue.

Musk's original concept for X, to give credit where due, envisioned subscriptions would comprise around 50% of overall intake.

Another area is data sales, where X has increased the price of its API to generate more revenue on this side, although that is also likely to be driving a minor fraction of X's overall business.

Putting that $2.9 billion total into some perspective, in 2022, the final year before Elon took over at the app, Twitter generated $4.4 billion in revenue, largely, again, from ad revenue. In 2023, Musk's first year at the company, that fell to around $3.4 billion, with ad revenue dropping precipitously.

So that would be another large drop if these estimates are true.

This is further complicated by X's debt service costs that came as part of the takeover deal Musk did. To fund his $44 billion cost of buying Twitter, Elon borrowed a share of this amount from various banks and attached debt from those loans to the company itself, avoiding personal liability. Debt servicing is set to cost X $1.2 billion per year as of now.

Subtract $1.2 billion from X's $2.9 billion in total revenue. Not much left over for X to service its various other costs, let alone make a profit.
At this point, growing the business seems rather unlikely, and in fact, there is a very real chance X is going to be running at a significant loss for the full year. It's probably why X now is pushing other avenues for potential intake: selling @handles for hundreds of thousands of dollars each and now pitching ad credits for brands willing to pony up for X Premium.

Of course, X has privatized itself, and we do not have a complete understanding of its actual operating data, so we do not know all the details behind its financial performance. But we do know that advertisers are still shying away from the app, in fact, increasingly since Musk's political commentary seems to be prompting ever greater hesitation in ad sales.

Which will leave the business in a precarious situation, and could lead to a shut down of the entire project.

Although there are other avenues that X can pursue if necessary.

For example, it's been speculated that Musk might use his rising xAI project to help prop up X itself. xAI closed a funding round of $6 billion earlier this year, and some thought that xAI could channel money through to X, based on its need for data input from the platform.

xAI is also collaborating with Tesla to introduce added data input, and Musk has already discussed the possibility of Tesla investing as much as $5 billion into xAI in order to increase its capacity.

Cross-pollination of Musk's companies would have to be sanctioned by the respective stakeholders in each, but X could potentially see significant cash injections via this route.

Well, really, so much of X's future hinges on who wins the election.

If Trump gets re-elected as President, then Musk will utilize that as a means to drive more investment in X in order to influence political opinion.  He is going to look to work with every government organization around the world to pledge his support for a price and that can also drive more investment into X.

And if Musk were granted a seat at the table in a government under President Trump that could also bode well for his business, assuming that he's able to clear the hurdles necessary to make any one of his companies, including X, happen.

Essentially, I suspect that X is in a pretty crappy financial situation, and things are going to come to a head in December one way or another. But depending on the outcome of the election, that could see more opportunity for X.

Although if Trump loses, my prediction would be that X will lose too.

And that could be a significant blow to Musk's "everything app" project.