Elon Musk has defended his financial stewardship of Twitter, arguing that the social media platform would have faced a “negative cash flow situation of $3 billion a year” were it not for his controversial cost-cutting efforts.

The billionaire entrepreneur, who bought the social networking company for $44 billion in October after previously attempting to pull out of the deal, gave a snapshot of its dire finances during a Twitter Spaces online forum on Wednesday.

“We have an emergency fire drill on our hands . . . This company is like you’re in a plane that is headed towards the ground and high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,” he said. “That’s the reason for my actions that may seem sometimes spurious.”