The social media platform Twitter
Twitter's stock rose more than 25% before the start of trading on the day that it released its Q4 2017 earnings. As markets opened on Thursday, Twitter's shares stood at $34.78, the highest they've been in three years. The company's performance at the end of 2017 was better than expected---analysts on Wall Street had projected that the company would generate revenue of $686 million in the fourth quarter, more than $45 million less than it actually earned.
This latest earnings release also marks the first time that the company reported year-over-year growth in the fiscal year 2017. The year's previous quarters had seen drops between 4 to 8 percent from corresponding periods in 2016. In an improvement on these figures, Twitter's latest quarterly revenue was up 2% from $717 million for last year's fourth quarter, with the site's latest advertising revenue up 7% from the same period. The company's fourth-quarter performance compensated for its poorer quarterly showings earlier in the year, pulling Twitter's total annual revenue numbers up to $2.4 billion.
The company's first profitable quarter was accompanied by less promising figures in the site's monthly active users. The company reported an average of 68 million monthly active users in the United States for the quarter, in a fall of 1 million from the third quarter. Twitter has struggled to continue to grow its user base in the U.S., where the social media platform seems close to saturation. The company's latest quarterly report was the second time in 2017 that U.S. monthly users figures fell in 2017.
The site's stagnating number of U.S. monthly users comes alongside slowing growth of Twitter's global user base. Twitter's average monthly active user count for the quarter came to 330 million worldwide, up 4% from the previous year. Though analysts had anticipated that the site would actually gain of 1 million monthly users from the previous quarter, Twitter saw zero net increase in monthly users from the third quarter. The number of Twitter's daily active users in the latest quarter rose 12% year over year, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in this sector for the company.
- http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-2F526X/5998567709x0x970892/F9B4F616-659A-454B-89C6-28480DA53CCA/Q4_2017_Shareholder_Letter.pdf
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2018/02/08/twitter-records-first-ever-profit-shares-surge-in-pre-market-trading/#6ba953f378e7
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/02/08/why-twitter-is-now-profitable-for-the-first-time-ever/?utm_term=.30f940335132
