Twitter’s first public earnings report beats expectations
Twitter reported its first earnings as a publicly traded company on Wednesday afternoon and soundly beat expectations.
The San Francisco company reported a loss of $511 million for the fourth quarter. Revenue totaled $243 million, up 116% from $112 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
Wall Street had expected revenue of about $218 million.
“Twitter finished a great year with our strongest financial quarter to date,†Chief Executive Dick Costolo said. “We are the only platform that is public, real-time, conversational and widely distributed and I’m excited by the number of initiatives we have underway to further build upon the Twitter experience.â€
The microblogging site had 241 million average monthly active users as of Dec. 31, up 30% year over year. Mobile users averaged 184 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 37%.
But user growth slowed, with Twitter adding only 9 million users in the last three months.
Shares of Twitter, which ended the day down less than 1% to $65.97, plummeted in after-hours trading. At 1:30 p.m. PST, they were down nearly 12%.
Timeline views reached 148 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, up 26%. Advertising revenue per thousand timeline views reached $1.49 in the fourth quarter, up 76%.
Twitter said its advertising revenue totaled $220 million, an increase of 121% year over year. Mobile advertising revenue accounts for more than 75% of that.
International revenue totaled $66 million, an increase of 200% year over year. International revenue was 27% of total revenue.
Twitter’s $511-million loss was largely due to stock-based compensation expense. During the fourth quarter in 2012, Twitter reported a loss of $9 million.
Excluding one-time items, fourth-quarter profit was $10 million, or 2 cents a share.
The company provided a first-quarter outlook that included projected revenue from $230 million to $240 million.
For the full year, Twitter estimated revenue to range from $1.15 billion to $1.2 billion.
The company will hold a conference call at 2 p.m. to discuss its financial results. Questions submitted via Twitter, directed to @TwitterIR using the hashtag #TWTRearnings will be considered during the Q&A portion of the call.
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