Irish arm of Elon Musk's X records loss of €240.5m

Gordon Deegan

The Irish arm of Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, recorded a pre-tax loss of €240.54 million in 2024, mainly due to a €120 million provision concerning a fine imposed by the European Commission last December.

New accounts filed by the Dublin-based X Internet UC show that the €240.54 million pre-tax loss for 2024 is a 19 per cent increase on the pre-tax loss of €202.5 million for 2023.

The directors state that “the increased loss is primarily attributable to a €120 million provision recognised in respect of the fine imposed by the European Commission on December 5th 2025”.

The Commission imposed the €120 million fine on X Internet UC after an investigation into X’s blue checkmark, the advertisement repository and data access to researchers

The directors state that the company “intends to challenge the Commission’s decision in the Court of Justice of the European Union”.

Revenues at X Internet UC - formerly Twitter International UC - slumped further by 10 per cent from €1.17 billion to €1.05 billionn in 2024, and this followed a 21 per cent decline in revenues in 2023.

The directors state that “our advertising revenue decline is primarily driven by a reduction in spend from large brand advertisers due to concerns about brand safety, reputation and/or content moderation”.

They state that “the business continues to take corrective measures to build brand safety tools, invest in platform safety and content moderation and then educate advertisers about these initiatives”.

The directors state that, excluding the effect of €120 million regulatory provision, “the underlying operating result improved year on year, driven mainly by restructuring programs that delivered significant cost reductions”.

They add that “however, the company continued to report a loss, reflecting a decline in revenue that outpaced the reduction in operating costs associated with maintaining and operating the platform, and data hosting services”.

The loss takes account of non-cash amortisation costs of €527.48 million in 2024.

The directors state that the company’s restructuring programme resulted in further reduction of its cost base in 2024, including workforce reduction and discontinuation of the office usage space to improve its financial performance.

The firm incurred a further €700,000 redundancy cost charge in 2024, and this followed combined redundancy costs of €13.1m over the previous two years.

Numbers declined further with the net loss of 79 jobs during 2024, declining from 187 to 108 as staff costs declined from €23.02m to €17.39 million in 2024.

Musk took the business private after his $44 billionn purchase in October 2022, and in 2022, the Irish unit employed 375 and staff costs totalled €59.9 million.

In 2024, X Internet UC recorded post-tax losses of €250.68m after incurring a corporation tax charge of €10.14million.

In a post-balance sheet event, the company declared and paid an interim dividend of €468 million to its parent, Lorikeet Inc last June and in November 2025, the company declared a further interim dividend of US$250 million, which was paid to Lorikeet Inc. on December 4th 2025.

In their report, the directors in April 2025, the company received notice from the Data Protection Commission of the commencement of an inquiry into Grok training using EU user data.

The directors state that the company has been responsive to all requests for information as part of this inquiry.