The news surrounding Twitter has been pretty harsh lately, especially after the company seemed to come so close to being acquired, only to have all of its prospective bidders drop out, causing its stock price to crash. To put it mildly: Twitter needed a win.
On Thursday morning, that’s exactly what it got, when it released its third quarter earnings, and beat easily.
The company posted revenue of $616 million, an increase of 8 percent year-over-year, above the $605.8 million expected by Wall Street. It reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.13, beating expectations of $0.9 a share.
Twitter also did well in the one area in which has consistently struggled: user growth. It reported that average monthly active users (MAUs) grew 3 percent year-to-year to 317 million for the quarter. They were also up from 313 million in the previous quarter.
Once again, almost all of Twitter’s revenue during the last quarter came from advertising, totaling $545 million, an increase of 6 percent year-over-year. Mobile advertising revenue was 90 percent of total advertising revenue.
Data licensing, and other revenue, came to $71 million, an increase of 26 percent year-over-year. Of Twitter’s total revenue, $242 million was international, an increase of 21 percent year-over-year.
The news wasn’t all good, as Twitter is still not a profitable company. It posted a quarterly GAAP net lossf $103 million, or ($0.15) a share.
Twitter’s stock is up slightly, rising 1.21 percent to $17.50 a share.
Job cuts
While the news for Twitter was pretty good overall, it’s tempered a bit by the fact that the company also announced it is laying off 9 percent of its staff, or 350 people.
Reports began to surface earlier this week that the number would be closer to 8 percent, or 300 workers.
The job cuts come amid a restructuring, which the company says “focuses primarily on reorganizing the company’s sales, partnerships, and marketing efforts.”
The sales team will be hit particularly hard by these cuts, as the company revealed that it will be cutting down from three sales channels to two.
As part of the restructuring, we will move from three sales channels to two. #TWTR
— TwitterIR (@TwitterIR) October 27, 2016
“We’re getting more disciplined about how we invest in the business, and we set a company goal of driving toward GAAP profitability in 2017,” Anthony Noto, Twitter’s CFO, said in a statement.
“We intend to fully invest in our highest priorities and are de-prioritizing certain initiatives and simplifying how we operate in other areas. Over time, we will look to invest in additional areas, as justified by expected returns and business results. In addition, our live strategy is showing great progress. We’ve received very positive feedback from partners, advertisers and people using the service, and we’re pleased with the strong audience and engagement results.”
This kind of cut is not unprecedented for Twitter. In October of last year, newly minted CEO Jack Dorsey, revealed that the company would be cutting 336 jobs, or 8 percent of its global workforce.
That was the first mass layoff in Twitter’s entire history. Now it’s about to see its second.
(Image source: wired.com)
