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Crypto Entrepreneurs Fail to Capture Elon Musk’s Attention With $600,000 Goat Statue

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AUSTIN, Texas—Even as a cold night started to settle outside

Tesla

‘s headquarters here on Saturday, a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs had no plans to leave until

Elon Musk,

the man they named their currency after, accepted a 12,000-pound sculpture of a Mr. Musk-headed goat riding a rocket.

It is the latest stunt in the cryptocurrency space, where jokes and memes about digital currencies regularly flood social media. But a 6-ton sculpture as a marketing gimmick isn’t so common.

The creators of Elon GOAT say the name of their cryptocurrency was inspired by their respect for Mr. Musk. They and his other fans think he is the “greatest of all time,” or a “GOAT.” They took the admiration literally, spending $600,000 to create a sculpture of Mr. Musk’s head, wearing a gold-plated dogecoin necklace on a goat’s body. The rocket can move, pointing to the sky as if it is taking off. Gas lines run through it so that flames can shoot out of the back.

They trucked it to

Tesla Inc.’s

headquarters, in hopes Mr. Musk would accept the gift. The creators are calling called the event “GOATSgiving.”

Elon Musk has warned of dire financial challenges facing Twitter, the social-media company he took over for $44 billion in October. WSJ’s Mark Maurer explains how the company is trying to fix its finances and avoid a potential bankruptcy. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann

But about two hours after the co-founders of Elon GOAT parked the sculpture right outside the Tesla building, there was no sign of Mr. Musk.

Dustin Dailey, a security officer at Tesla, walked over to a group of about 15 people and said they couldn’t accept the sculpture on Mr. Musk’s behalf, but would find a spot for it on their property if Mr. Musk gave the thumbs-up.

But so far Mr. Musk hasn’t given any indication he would accept it or whether he knew the sculpture was there. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment

“I am fairly certain he does know about it,” said Mr. Dailey of the sculpture. “It’s all over Twitter.”

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What do you think of the Elon Musk goat sculpture? Join the conversation below. 

Alec Wolvert, an Elon GOAT co-founder and chief marketing officer, said they were planning on camping out on a piece of public land off a toll road that overlooks the headquarters until Mr. Musk accepted the sculpture.

“We’re gonna stay here as long as possible,” Mr. Wolvert said. “I even heard some people say they were going to strap themselves to it.”

The idea of the sculpture came together last year. “It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” said

Ashley Sansalone,

an Elon GOAT co-founder.

Metal sculptor Kevin Stone spent nearly six months working on the sculpture of Elon Musk.



Photo:

Kevin Stone

The cryptocurrency entrepreneurs asked Kevin Stone, a metal sculptor in British Columbia, Canada, to make the giant sculpture with Mr. Musk’s head. The goal: to get Mr. Musk to tweet about the sculpture to his more than 118 million followers and draw attention to their cryptocurrency, the Elon GOAT.

“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” said Mr. Sansalone, 40 years old.

Mr. Sansalone said he works on the token full time and previously ran a construction company and traded energy. Unlike bitcoin, ether or dogecoin, the Elon GOAT token is far from a household cryptocurrency name. It is ranked well outside the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, according to CoinMarketCap.

Mr. Musk’s head, which took nearly six months to complete was made by Mr. Stone. The goat body and rocket were made by others in Phoenix to speed up the project, Mr. Sansalone said. Then all the pieces were put together and attached to the back of a 70-foot long semi-truck trailer.

“When I first saw the statue my jaw dropped,” said DeMarco Hill, 51, who spotted it in September in Goodyear, Ariz., where he lives. He grabbed his 12-year-old son and they followed it. “It was something you’ve never seen before in your life.”

Mr. Hill, a trucker who owns his own company, Stay Ready Trucking, thought the stunt was so entertaining that he found Mr. Sansalone and asked if he could participate. Mr. Sansalone said Mr. Hill was needed because only someone with a special license could drive around the heaping pile of metal.

He has since driven the sculpture through California, Arizona and Washington, before bringing it to Texas. People who drive by honk their horns or give a thumbs-up, Mr. Hill said. 

“If I pull up to the side of the road it’s like people crowding around,” he said. “It gets crazy.”

Mr. Sansalone said the sculpture has mostly gotten a positive response. He hasn’t heard anyone mistaken Mr. Musk’s face for someone else. “I would say he is probably the most relevant person on the planet right now,” Mr. Sansalone said about Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who recently bought Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.

In September, the sculpture sat in front of Tesla’s office in Palo Alto, Calif., during the company’s artificial-intelligence conference. Tesla employees crossed the street to take pictures with the sculpture, Mr. Sansalone said. Mr. Musk was at the conference, according to Twitter posts he made, and Mr. Sansalone assumes the billionaire saw the sculpture. 

“All there was to look at was a lit-up rocket erected in the middle of the street,” he said. 

On Saturday night, the group remained hopeful.

At one point in the evening, a group of about 20 people who were waiting outside started to chant “Elon claim your goat” in the hopes that the god of crypto, as one co-founder put it, would hear them.

“I’m a huge fan of Elon and I want to give this man his flowers while he’s alive,” said Aamir Manzoor, a 36-year-old from Toronto who is a holder of Elon GOAT. “He’s done a lot for the world.”

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com, Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com

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Business

How Elon Musk’s Twitter Faces Mountain of Debt, Falling Revenue and Surging Costs

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To make the deal work, Mr. Musk has been trying to add subscription revenue and reassure advertisers about the platform’s future. Twitter was losing money before Mr. Musk bought the company, and the deal added a debt burden that requires fresh sources of cash.

It is tough to determine the state of the company. Twitter no longer has to file regular financial reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are crucial tools for determining a company’s financial health.

Analysts and academics have been able to piece together a picture of the company from information Mr. Musk has offered as well as details of the deal and the company’s last regulatory filings. Bankruptcy could be one result. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, could also raise new funds, or buy back debt from lenders, giving Twitter a buffer to turn around its business. 

Here is a look at their assessments of Twitter’s financial situation and prospects. 

Twitter Finances, Pre-Musk

Twitter is and was a popular tool for politicians, celebrities and journalists. But as a business, it was stagnating. 

It hasn’t booked an annual profit since 2019, and posted a loss in eight years of the past decade. The company’s net loss narrowed in 2021, to $221.4 million from $1.14 billion the previous year.

Twitter has struggled to attract new users and increase revenue, which came in at about $5.1 billion last year. In its last quarterly filing as a public company, for the period ended June 30, revenue was $1.18 billion, down slightly year-over-year. 

Nearly 90% of its revenue last year came from advertising, and it traditionally has been the company’s main source of revenue. In 2021, Twitter took in $4.51 billion from advertisers, and $572 million from licensing data and other services.

The company had more than $2 billion in cash and less than $600 million in net debt before the takeover talks—very little debt for a company in the S&P 500 index. But that cash position was down 35% from a year earlier as of June 30, filings show, and Mr. Musk paid for Twitter by taking on $13 billion in debt. He paid for the rest in equity, some contributed by multiple investors. 

Twitter had a market capitalization of $37.48 billion in March, the month before Mr. Musk agreed to buy it, S&P data showed. Social-media stocks have slumped sharply since then. But now, according to

Jeffrey Davies,

a former credit analyst and founder of data provider Enersection LLC, “This thing’s probably not worth more than what the debt stack is, quite frankly, unless you put a lot of option value just on Elon.” Mr. Musk last month said he and investors were overpaying for the company in the short term. 

Revenue Under Musk

Mr. Musk said earlier this month that Twitter had suffered “a massive drop in revenue” and was losing $4 million a day. It isn’t clear if that reflects the broader downturn in the digital ad market or the pause in advertising by several companies since Mr. Musk bought the business. 

Some companies, including burrito chain

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.,

cereal maker

General Mills Inc.

and airline

United Airlines Holdings Inc.,

have paused their ad spending on Twitter over uncertainty around where the company is headed. The departure of several top executives from its ad department have soured relationships, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

The exodus of advertisers poses a threat for a company so reliant on that revenue stream. “As an online ad company, you’re flirting with disaster,” said

Aswath Damodaran,

a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. 

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, ending a monthslong saga over whether or not he would go through with his offer to acquire the social media platform. WSJ takes an inside look at the tweets, texts and filings to see exactly how the battle played out. Illustration: Jordan Kranse

Deal negotiations for long-term contracts that usually begin at the end of the year haven’t taken place yet or have been put on hold. Those deals comprise more than 30% of Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Revenue will likely remain under pressure until advertisers fully grasp the new business model, potentially leading many of them to return to the platform, said

Brent Thill,

a senior analyst at Jefferies Group LLC, a financial-services firm. “Those advertisers will come back if they feel that the users are there and there’s an ability to monetize their advertisement,” Mr. Thill said. 

But that could take time. Mr. Thill said it could take months for advertisers to get clarity. “It’s an enigma,” he said.  

Market-research firm Insider Intelligence Inc. recently cut its annual ad-revenue revenue outlook for Twitter by nearly 40% through 2024. 

Mr. Musk wants the company to lean more on subscriptions and depend less on digital advertising. He said last Tuesday that the company’s upgraded subscription service, costing $7.99 a month, would launch Nov. 29. 

A walkway at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. The company has aggressively cut staff to reduce expenses.



Photo:

George nikitin/Shutterstock

Reducing Costs

The company has moved quickly to slash costs, including cutting its staff by half. Salaries and other compensation make up a large chunk of overall expenses. The company had 7,500 full-time employees at the end of 2021, up from 5,500 a year earlier, filings show.

The layoffs of roughly 3,700 people could save the company roughly $860 million a year, if the employees that are leaving made an average of about $233,000 annually—the company’s most recently disclosed median pay figure. The estimated savings would represent about 15% of Twitter’s $5.57 billion in costs and expenses last year. Its costs and expenses climbed 51% from the previous year, as hiring drove up its payroll.

More employees left the company last week, rejecting Mr. Musk’s demand that they commit to working “long hours at high intensity” to stay.

Debt Mountain 

Before Mr. Musk’s acquisition, net debt totaled $596.5 million as of June 30, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, a data provider. That compares with a negative balance of $2.18 billion the prior-year period, indicating a cash surplus.

Twitter paid $23.3 million in interest expense in the quarter ended June 30, according to a filing. 

Now, the company will have to pay at least $9 billion in interest to banks and hedge funds over the next seven to eight years, when the $13 billion in debt matures, according to a review of Twitter’s loans by Mr. Davies, the former credit analyst.

The interest payments are substantial for a company that reported $6.3 billion in total operating cash flow over the past eight years, he said. 

What’s more, the company’s debt stack now includes floating-rate debt, meaning that interest costs are set to rise as the Federal Reserve continues to increase interest rates. Twitter’s debt was entirely fixed rate before the deal. 

Twitter’s credit ratings, which were below investment grade before the transaction with Mr. Musk, have deteriorated further.

Moody’s

Investors Service on Oct. 31 downgraded Twitter’s rating to B1 from Ba2, a two-notch drop, and S&P Global Ratings on Nov. 1 downgraded it to B- from BB+, a five-notch drop. 

If Twitter files for bankruptcy, Elon Musk’s $27 billion investment would likely be wiped out.



Photo:

Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Financial Prospects 

Twitter’s financial challenges could result in the company filing for bankruptcy, raising equity or buying back some debt from its lenders, analysts and academics said. 

If Twitter files for bankruptcy, as Mr. Musk warned was possible in an all-hands meeting earlier this month, his $27 billion investment would likely be wiped out because equity holders are the last to be paid when a company restructures.

Buying back debt from lenders at a steep discount would help the company reduce its debt load and interest costs as well as its valuation, which would be beneficial in the long run, Mr. Davies said. 

“I don’t think they can issue any more debt,” Mr. Davies said. “It’s a really, really tough structure.” 

The company could also replace some of the debt with equity, both from Mr. Musk and from outside investors, said

David Kass,

a finance professor at the University of Maryland’s

Robert H. Smith

School of Business. For that, Mr. Musk would need to persuade potential investors that he has a viable long-term business plan, he said. Replacing debt could enable the company to generate cash. Mr. Musk has said some of his latest

Tesla Inc.

stock sale, yielding almost $4 billion in cash, was because of Twitter. 

If successful, the company could generate positive free cash flow in two or three years, which it could use to pay down the residual debt and eventually go public again, Mr. Kass said. “The prospect of an eventual IPO within three to five years would be a very attractive enticement for large funds,” he said. 

—Theo Francis and Jennifer Williams-Alvarez contributed to this article.

Write to Mark Maurer at mark.maurer@wsj.com

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Business

Elon Musk Says Twitter Has Had Massive Revenue Drop as Layoffs Begin

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Twitter Inc. has suffered “a massive drop in revenue” because of advertisers cutting back on using the social-media platform, new owner

Elon Musk

said Friday, as the company started sweeping layoffs just over a week after the billionaire took it over.

Mr. Musk, in a tweet Friday, blamed the cutback in advertising on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” He said that the company hadn’t changed content moderation and had tried to address activists’ concerns. “Extremely messed up!” he said, casting the pullback as an assault on free speech.

Mr. Musk’s remarks came after several big-name advertisers, including food company

General Mills Inc.,

GIS -0.63%

Oreo maker

Mondelez International Inc.,

MDLZ 0.44%

and

Pfizer Inc.

PFE 0.74%

and others have temporarily paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Mr. Musk, The Wall Street Journal has reported. German car-making giant

Volkswagen AG

said it had recommended to its various brands they pause advertising on Twitter to assess any revisions the company makes to its brand safety guidelines.

Mr. Musk’s tweet comes after Twitter, in a message sent to staff Thursday, said staffers would be notified by 9 a.m. Friday if they had lost their position or were still employed, the Journal reported.

Twitter by early Friday began notifying employees who had been laid off, according to documents viewed by the Journal.

Roughly 50% of Twitter’s workforce has been hit with layoffs, according to an email sent overnight to one of those affected in the U.S. that was viewed by the Journal. It didn’t specify what departments the terminated employees worked in.

Twitter had more than 7,500 employees at the start of this year, according to a regulatory filing.

The staff reductions were intended “to place Twitter on a healthy path,” according to the company’s Thursday email. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,” the company added.

In the layoff emails, Twitter said employees assigned “nonworking” status would continue to receive compensation and benefits through a separation date, which for one person was designated as early February and for another early January. It said to expect to receive one month’s base pay in severance approximately 45 days after the termination date, in addition to providing instructions for returning company property such as laptops.

Twitter didn’t say whether employees should expect to receive year-end bonuses, which historically have been based on individual and company performance. The company also didn’t mention whether employees would receive equity payments during the nonworking period.

Some employees said they had lost access to Twitter communication tools overnight. An email sent to an employee in Canada and seen by the Journal said that suspended access to the company’s systems didn’t mean the person’s employment has been terminated.

The layoffs cap a tumultuous period for Twitter staff that began in April, when the company disclosed Mr. Musk had become its largest individual shareholder. Mr. Musk then agreed to join Twitter’s board, before deciding not to. He launched a bid for the company that Twitter eventually accepted. Weeks later Mr. Musk raised questions about the deal, then tried to abandon it, before reversing course again last month and saying he would go ahead with the transaction. Along the way, he at times criticized the company and its executives.

The Thursday email said Twitter’s offices would be temporarily closed to ensure the safety of employees, the company’s systems and customer data. Employees who were in an office or on their way to one were asked to go home, according to the email.

Twitter employees have been bracing for job cuts. The Journal previously reported that the company was drafting plans for broad layoffs, with one investor saying up to 50% of staff could be cut and that employees would be evaluated to determine the scope of the firings.

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, ending a monthslong saga over whether or not he would go through with his offer to acquire the social media platform. WSJ takes an inside look at the tweets, texts and filings to see exactly how the battle played out. Illustration: Jordan Kranse

Signs of pushback against Twitter’s actions emerged in the wake of the apparent dismissals. In a federal lawsuit dated Thursday, a handful of Twitter employees accused the company of violating federal and California law in failing to provide enough warning of a mass layoff.

The lawsuit, filed in California federal court by five former employees of Twitter who said they were terminated this week, said the company’s layoffs violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and its California equivalent, which require giving 60 days of advance written warning of dismissing a large number of employees of a company at once. The lawsuit asked the court to issue an order blocking Twitter from its alleged violations of the acts. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In April, as Mr. Musk was moving to buy Twitter, entrepreneur

Jason Calacanis,

a close ally, suggested cutting the number of Twitter employees to roughly 3,000, according to messages between the two, which were released as part of litigation around the transaction.

A staff of 3,000 would represent the lowest level since 2013, the year Twitter went public, when the platform had about 2,700 employees and its revenue was roughly 13% of its level last year.

Twitter’s employee numbers began climbing in 2019, after ranging between approximately 3,000 and 4,000 for several years. Twitter has said that the increase in recent years was driven by investments in engineering, product, design and research.

Even before officially taking control at Twitter, Mr. Musk had indicated that he was concerned about the company’s expenses. Twitter has posted a loss in eight of its past 10 fiscal years, according to FactSet.

Mr. Musk moved quickly to make personnel changes at the top of the company. Last week, on the same day he closed the deal, he fired Twitter Chief Executive

Parag Agrawal

and three other top executives. Mr. Musk fired the executives for cause and is saying he isn’t required to pay them multimillion-dollar severance packages, the Journal reported. Other executives have departed since.

Mr. Musk has leveraged other parts of his business empire to try to put his imprint on Twitter. He brought in some

Tesla

engineers to begin working on reshaping the social-media platform, the Journal reported. Also added to an internal company directory were some people who appeared to work for the Boring Co., a tunneling business Mr. Musk founded.

Broadly, the social-media industry is struggling with weaker revenue from digital advertisers. Such advertising has slowed due to several factors, including rising inflation, the war in Ukraine, and

Apple

privacy changes that have made it harder to track the performance of ads. Twitter rival Snap Inc. this year said it was letting 20% of staff go.

Facebook

parent Meta Platforms Inc. also has indicated it was trimming ranks.

Tech companies beyond social media also have embarked on belt tightening that is leading to job losses and hiring freezes. On Thursday, ride-hailing company

Lyft Inc.

and payments company Stripe Inc. announced major layoffs, and

Amazon.com Inc.

said it would freeze corporate hiring for months.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com and Alexa Corse at alexa.corse@wsj.com

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Business

Elon Musk Says Twitter Won’t Be ‘Free-for-All Hellscape,’ Addressing Advertisers’ Concerns

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Advertisers are concerned about the billionaire’s plans to soften content moderation and what they say are potential conflicts of interest in auto advertising, given that he is chief executive of

Tesla Inc.,

say people familiar with the situation.

Mr. Musk said this spring that as owner of Twitter he would reinstate former President

Donald Trump’s

account, which the platform suspended indefinitely after linking Mr. Trump’s comments to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That would be a red line for some brands, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a leading ad-buying agency that represents blue-chip brands.

About a dozen of GroupM’s clients, which own an array of well-known consumer brands, have told the agency to pause all their ads on Twitter if Mr. Trump’s account is reinstated, Ms. Taylor said. Others are in wait-and-see mode. Ms. Taylor said she expects to hear from many more clients if Mr. Trump’s account returns.

“That doesn’t mean that we won’t be entertaining lots of emails and phone calls as soon as a transaction goes through,” Ms. Taylor said. “I anticipate we’ll be busy.”

In a message to advertisers on Twitter on Thursday, Mr. Musk said he was buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He said Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Mr. Musk said in addition to following laws, Twitter must be “warm and welcoming to all.”

He said Twitter aims to be a platform that “strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

Twitter’s chief customer officer, Sarah Personette, tweeted that she had a discussion with Mr. Musk on Wednesday evening. “Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged,” she wrote. “Looking forward to the future!”

Mr. Trump has said he wouldn’t rejoin Twitter even if allowed. Representatives for Tesla and Mr. Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk has completed the acquisition of Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter, after a monthslong legal battle in which he tried to back out of the $44 billion deal he agreed to in April. The judge overseeing the legal fight had said if the deal didn’t close by Friday she would schedule a November trial.

Twitter sent an email to some ad buyers earlier this week letting them know that the company is working with “the buyer” to close the acquisition by Friday and to acknowledge that Twitter is aware that advertisers have a lot of questions, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The email, which didn’t name Mr. Musk, said Twitter would work “with the potential buyer to answer quickly.”

Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue in 2021. Mr. Musk has said he hates advertising. In a series of tweets earlier this year, he suggested Twitter should move toward subscriptions and remove ads from Twitter Blue, a premium program that gives users additional features. 

Twitter will become a private company if Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid is approved. The move would allow Musk to make changes to the site. WSJ’s Dan Gallagher explains Musk’s proposed changes and the challenges he might face enacting them. Illustration: Jordan Kranse

Mr. Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has said Twitter should be more cautious about removing tweets or banning users.

Mr. Musk may have reasons to avoid any drastic changes to Twitter’s ad business. Twitter will take on $13 billion in debt in the deal. The online-ad markets already are shaky, amid concerns about the economy, with

Snap Inc.

and

Alphabet Inc.

posting lower-than-expected revenue results for the September quarter.

Like other ad-supported social-media platforms, Twitter provides advertisers with adjacency controls, tools that are meant to ensure ads don’t appear next to certain content the brands deem objectionable.

Ask WSJ

The Musk-Twitter Deal

WSJ Financial Editor Charles Forelle sits down with Alexa Corse, WSJ reporter covering Twitter, at 1 p.m. ET Oct. 28 to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. What does the future hold for the platform? And what does this deal mean for Mr. Musk’s business empire?

Some ad buyers said Twitter lags behind its competitors in providing so-called brand safety features. Joshua Lowcock, global chief media officer at UM Worldwide, an ad agency owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., called Twitter’s adjacency controls inadequate and “poorly thought through.”

Ad agency

Omnicom Media Group

evaluates the major social-media platforms’ progress on brand-safety tools every quarter. In July, Omnicom rated Twitter’s progress behind that of YouTube,

Facebook,

Instagram, TikTok and Reddit, according to a document reviewed by the Journal. Robert Pearsall, managing director of social activation at Omnicom Media Group, said Twitter has made agreements to improve its brand-safety controls to meet Omnicom’s standards, but it hasn’t introduced those changes to the market yet.

“There are significant concerns about the implications of a possible change to content moderation policy,” he said. Twitter has said it is working on tools to give advertisers a better idea of where their ads appear.

Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue last year.



Photo:

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Automotive manufacturers have expressed concerns about advertising on Twitter under Mr. Musk’s ownership, given his role at electric-vehicle juggernaut Tesla, some ad buyers said. Advertisers often share data with Twitter and other platforms—on their own customers or people that are in the market for a car—to help target their ads at the right people. Some auto companies will be wary of doing so, out of concern that data may leak to Tesla, the buyers said.

Though Twitter relies on ad dollars, it isn’t one of the biggest players in the digital-ad economy. The company gets about 1.1% of U.S. digital-ad spending, according to Insider Intelligence, a much smaller slice than Google, Meta Platforms Inc. or

Amazon.com Inc.

Already, there have been signs of anxiety on Madison Avenue about Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In July, the company reported a 1% decrease in second-quarter revenue, which it blamed on uncertainty over the deal as well as broader pressures in the digital ad market.

Given Mr. Musk’s past remarks on advertising, some advertisers wonder if Mr. Musk may exit the ad business entirely.

“The question we keep getting asked is: Do we think Musk will turn off ads completely?” said UM Worldwide’s Mr. Lowcock.

Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com

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