Musk says Twitter has lost 50 percent of its ad revenue as it struggles with a ‘heavy debt load’.

Twitter’s financial woes appear to have continued, with owner Elon Musk facing a 50 percent drop in ad revenue as the platform struggles with a heavy debt load.

We are still cash flow negative due to ~50% decline in advertising revenue and heavy debt load. Before we have the luxury of anything else, we need to reach positive cash flow, said Musk, the owner of Twitter Twitter Saturday.

Musk, who serves as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal. Before stepping down last month, he served as CEO of the social media platform and served as chief executive and chief technology officer.

The billionaire has made a series of controversial choices since taking over the company in October; These include mass layoffs, the firing of senior executives, and the launch of the Twitter Blue program, which requires users to pay a monthly subscription for verification checks. Musk has also pushed back on various content moderation measures, limiting how many tweets users can read in a day and reinstating previously banned accounts like former President Trump.

He tried to reassure advertisers who were worried about the polls after he told the BBC in April that the platform was “presumably collapsing” after being overtaken by upheaval. Musk told the BBC that most advertisers had returned following their exodus, the BBC reported.

In May, Musk hired Linda Iaccarino, who was head of advertising for NBCUniversal, as a new CEO, who he said will focus mostly on business, including product design and new technology.

The news comes after Matthew Price, CEO of web security firm Cloudflare, announced that Twitter traffic has declined since Musk bought the social media platform.

Earlier this month, Meta launched a new text-based platform that directly competes with Twitter. The platform reached 100 million downloads in its first week of release.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.