Twitter recently released its quarterly report and contrary to expectations from most financial pundits, the company has actually managed to register an increase in various aspects. From a spike in user numbers to generating more revenue than expected, it appears as if the social networking platform has finally managed to receive a break.
Twitter has been struggling, that much is no secret. The company has been plagued with a host of issues including executives who have been jumping ship, tough competition in the advertising space from companies like Facebook and Snap and so on. Indeed, it appeared as if Twitter was all but ready to give up but now, the company has received a godsend in form of a good quarter — finally!
In its latest quarterly report, Twitter said that it generated almost $548 million in revenue, managing to earn 11 cents to a share. The company also registered a substantial increase in the number of monthly active users, which has been brought up to 328 million users. This came after Twitter saw an influx of 9 million new active monthlies.
Compare it with Wall Street expectations: Analysts were expecting an increase of merely 1 cent per share and a total revenue of 511.9 million. And where the active users are concerned, hardly anyone was expecting the company to add 9 million new monthly actives.
However, the results are still mixed. Twitter still managed to register a significant quarter over quarter decrease. Last year for instance, Twitter generated around $595 million in revenue, which means its total revenue fell 8% year-over-year.
Twitter did mark an increase in revenue from its data licensing business, which went up by $10 million. However, the company’s main source of income that is advertising, continued to decrease. Twitter’s efforts to cut down expenses have been moderately successful as well and the company said that its expenses had decreased by 5 percent, year over year.
It also seems as if Twitter’s efforts towards curtailing abuse is bearing fruits.
We’ve made meaningful progress toward identifying and removing accounts that demonstrate abusive behavior and, as a result, we’re seeing less abuse reported across the service.
This along with other additions like increasing the number of characters available to users, could have also contributed to an increased daily activity.
We gave people more characters for their replies by removing @names from the Tweet text, we’re building a unified API platform, and we’ve launched new Direct Message APIs, creating a more cohesive product experience for consumers and developers.
Meanwhile, it appears as if Twitter and its top management finally have more time to run things their way. Dorsey’s new machinations seem to be yielding tangible fruits and that alone could allow investors to sustain their faith in the leadership. The company stock also spiked by up to 12 percent following the earnings report.
