Has Twitter Finally Lost All Confidence?

Twitter earnings reports

Another earnings release for Twitter (TWTR), another different response. You can hardly blame Wall Street for being so fickle. The social media company does show flashing signs of promise, but they’re often followed by disappointments.

Last year was a major disappointment for Twitter. After hitting an all-time high in the low $70s in December 2013, the company’s stock plunged to $29.51 on worries of growth problems and the fact that the company wasn’t making any money. It then saw another rise in July as its user growth beat analyst expectations. It was then back down again three months later after disappointing numbers and up again after its January 2015 earnings showed promise again.

If you take a look at a graph of Twitter’s stock over the last year, you’re looking at a roller coaster. So where are we now? The 150-foot free fall.

Another disappointment

Twitter’s earnings numbers were actually leaked before the company planned to release them. Financial intelligence firm Selerity allegedly found the information on Twitter’s Investor Relations page and leaked the information on its—get this—Twitter page. The market responded to the release by dropping Twitter shares almost 20%, it’s second-worst trading day in company history. Here’s the skinny on what Selerity reported (and was confirmed by Twitter during its official call):

  • Revenue of $436 million, missing analyst expectations of $456.8 million, but still up 74% from this time last year.
  • Earnings per share of $0.07, beating expectations by $0.03.
  • Monthly active users (MAUs) rose by 14 million from last quarter to 302 million. Mobile MAUs made up 80% of the total, matching last quarter’s numbers.
  • More bad news

    But that’s not the worst of it. I mean, considering that Twitter beat on earnings and still had decent MAU growth, the really bad news came during the conference call. The first was that the company cut guidance through the rest of 2015. For the second quarter, revenue is guiding at $470 million to $485 million, well below a $538.2 million analyst consensus. Full-year revenue guidance has been cut to $2.17 billion to $2.27 billion (below a $2.37 billion consensus). Considering Twitter was getting major props three months ago for its strides in beefing up its revenue streams, this isn’t what we want to see.

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    Author: Travis Esquivel

    Travis Esquivel is an engineer, passionate soccer player and full-time dad. He enjoys writing about innovation and technology from time to time.

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