Executives at Twitter have, once again, taken Wall Street by surprise. They announced on Friday a decline in quarterly revenue. They placed the blame on a soft advertising market and on Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Executives say revenue for the April-to-June quarter was 1.18 billion dollars, a drop of 1 percent from the same period last year. And they reported a loss of 270 million dollars.

Twitter and other social media companies make most of their money from ads. But advertisers have been hit by inflation and fears of a recession. So they have cut their marketing budgets.

Musk has been another source of concern. He offered to buy Twitter for 44 billion dollars, but then changed his mind and started ripping the company on its own platform. Twitter sued him to complete the deal.

Executives say the situation prevents them from hosting an earnings conference call, issuing a letter to shareholders, or even sharing financial projections. One analyst calls it a "disastrous scenario."