Today is the first earnings report from Twitter as a public company. They exceeded expectations as they were actually expected to lose about .02 a share and made .02 a share.
After the bell this afternoon, Twitter reported its maiden earnings as a public company, with fourth quarter revenue of $242.7 million and earnings per share of $0.02. Analysts had expected Twitter to lose two cents per share on total revenue of $217.82 million.
Media Bistro said this before the release:
Two things to watch in this earnings report are signs of growth in overall ad revenues, and also a boost in total user base numbers.
Analysts have projected that Twitter’s quarterly revenue will more than double to $218 million but that the company’s losses will also mount, with a 2 cents per share loss forecast. If growth slows or losses are worst than expected the stock will likely take an immediate hit.
Mission accomplished.
Second part:
Equally, investors will want to see gains in Twitter’s stagnating user base, which hit 232 million active users last year but hasn’t really expanded significantly in two quarters. Personally I think if that number is less than 250 million something is off, as Twitter had an absolute ton of positive publicity towards and after the IPO, so lots of folks should have been checking it out for the first time. If they didn’t, or if they didn’t stay, that would have to be seen as a negative.
Well they came in at 241 million users.
Stock first went up after hours and now is trading down about 11%, I would have to think its based on the user numbers. Of course this will be talked about all night and into tomorrow.
That’s right Twitter are no way gaining in growth as Facebook did, the interface is struggling with the 140 characters and niche user content, if they can add a pictorial to their platform soon, it might change things for them IMO.