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Inside Elon Musk’s big plans for Twitter

    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 carried over to his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

    Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, has been presenting a pitch deck to investors in recent days in which he outlines his grand – some may be unbelievable – plans for Twitter and its financial goals. The New York Times received the presentation. Here’s a look at what Mr. Musk sees for the social media service in the coming years.

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

    Under Mr. Musk, advertising would fall to 45 percent of total revenue, from about 90 percent in 2020. By 2028, advertising would bring in $12 billion in revenue and subscriptions nearly $10 billion, the document said. Other revenue would come from companies such as data licenses.

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

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

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

    Included in Mr. Musk’s total user estimates are what appear to be subscribers to a new product called X, which, according to the document, would have 104 million users by 2028. The document didn’t mention what X subscribers were, but Mr. Musk has suggested introducing an ad-free experience on Twitter. The X Subscribers product will hit the field in 2023, with an expected nine million users in its first year.

    According to the document, Mr. Musk expects Twitter to have 11,072 employees by 2025. That would be an increase of about 7,500 today.

    But in the meantime, Mr. Musk expects the number to fluctuate, rising to 9,225 employees in 2022, before falling to 8,332 in 2023 before rising again. Mr. Musk will likely lay off employees as part of his acquisition before bringing in new talent in the tech, said a person with knowledge of the situation. Stock-based compensation costs are also expected to rise to just over $3 billion in 2028, from $914 million in 2022.

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