The status of Twitter as a public company may soon change if Elon Musk has his way and the deal to acquire the social media juggernaut for $44 billion is completed without a hitch. So this may well be one of the final financial statements posted by Twitter as a public company.
Twitter posted its Q1 2022 earnings today, reporting a year-over-year rise of 16% in revenue. Revenue came in at $1.2 billion, which is also a year-over-year increase of 19% on a constant currency basis. Revenue from advertising made up the bulk of it – $1.11 billion, which is a year-over-year increase of 23% – while subscription and other sources generated $94 million in revenue, which is a decrease of 31% year-over-year.
Twitter’s diluted earnings per share (EPS) came at $0.61, while its net income came at $513 million, representing a net margin of 43%. This includes a pre-tax gain of $970 million from the sale of MoPub (to AppLovin at the start of the year) and income taxes related to the gain of $331 million.
Coming to the number of users in the first quarter of the year, Twitter noted that the average monetizable daily active usage (mDAU) saw a growth of 15.9% when compared to Q1 2021 to come at 229 million for the same period this year, exceeding the estimated 226.9 million.
Breaking it down, we see that the average mDAU in the US grew by 6.4% year-over-year to come at 39.6 million, while the average mDAU across the globe rose by 18.1% year-over-year to reach 189.4 million.
One thing to note is that the number of mDAUs of Twitter has been overstated for the past few quarters (from March 2019, in fact, so the affected quarters are Q1 2019 to Q4 2021). The difference between the previously reported mDAU and the recast mDAU is as much as 1.9 million per quarter.
A conference call or a shareholder letter, or even providing financial guidance is customary, however, Twitter will not be issuing any of them as the impending deal between the board and Elon Musk (that of the acquisition of Twitter by the billionaire) is still in the air.
“Given the pending acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, we will not be providing any forward-looking guidance, and are withdrawing all previously provided goals and outlook,” the company noted.
