Twitter’s steady financial decline has prompted the company to place several items from its offices for auction online. Rental gripes have heightened the issue and now, the company is parting ways with a variety of objects from its San Francisco headquarters.
Quick Facts
- The auction, brought together by Heritage Global Partners, is the latest disruption in the company which is currently in a financial rut
- The items, clubbed into 631 lots have been termed as “surplus corporate office assets”
- Twitter is even selling a statue of the platform’s famous blue bird logo for $11,000 with less than 24 hours left to bid
- The move is an extension of Musk’s rigorous efforts to reduce costs
The items up for auction range from standard office essentials like furniture, whiteboards, and desks to industrial-scale kitchenware. Some kitchen equipment on sale includes many high-end La Marzocco espresso machines and a fizzy drink fountain that comes with an ice dispenser.
Even less popular items like neon electrical signage and more than 100 KN95 facemasks are being auctioned off. Twitter is also selling a pair of Herman Miller coffee tables that have a retail estimate of $2,000 new.
It will offload designer chairs, stationary bike stations, iMacs coffee machines, printing equipment, soundproof conference booths, sets of small drawers (with a bid of $60), and designer sofas.
What is the Twitter auction all about?
The Twitter sale is the latest development in Elon Musk’s ongoing mission to reduce costs in the company. He bought Twitter for $44 billion dollars by leveraging a portion of the money from banks.
Now, the social media giant is in a financial crisis, combating a debt of 13$ billion. Musk has no choice but to take strict measures to curtail its expenses even if it means laying off half of its workforce which equaled 7500 workers before his acquisition.
He also discontinued free meals, a tradition started by its former CEO Jack Dorsey, and slashed employee perks. There are also reports of Musk not paying severance packages to the employees he offloaded from the company.
According to a tweet he posted in November 2022, the company had experienced a “massive drop in revenue” after it lost many advertisers. He even warned that Twitter might go bankrupt.
It currently is short on money to even cover rent for its office spaces in different cities. So it has shut down its operations in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Mexico, Africa, Australia, and South Korea. It has also closed its offices in Europe and India.
Twitter was sued for not paying the rent for its San Francisco HQ and a brief debacle was witnessed in its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore before the Twitter 2.0 team paid its rent obligations.
Elon Musk has been deeply invested in Twitter’s growth in the US overlooking the fact that the company’s profits mainly come from the Asia Pacific region. Although it is clear that the auction is another way to recoup costs, Nick Dove, a representative of Heritage Global Partners, claimed that the sale has nothing to do with it.
“If anyone genuinely thinks that the revenue from selling a couple of computers and chairs will pay for the mountain there, then they’re a moron,” he shared.
Will the auction help Twitter recover from its financial crisis?
The auction will help Twitter ease its finances, but only to an extent. It all depends on the money raised by the sales. However, what could affect the company negatively is its office closures in key markets.
These closures could further decrease Twitter’s overall income. Before Elon Musk’s takeover, the company was spread out over two dozen major centres around the world, including Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Mumbai, Manila, and Jakarta. Twitter also had around 20 offices in the US.
