There has been a ton going on over at Twitter over the last few months, with a shakeup in leadership, big layoffs and a stock that has been falling.
Now comes the first test for Jack Dorsey, who took over as CEO in an interim status in July before being named permanently to the position last month. This is the first full quarter where he has been at the head of the company.
Shares of Twitter have dropped over 11 percent in after hours trading, following the release of the company’s third-quarter earnings report, erasing the day’s gains and then some. The stock had risen 1.46%, or $0.45 to $31.34 a share during regular trading on Tuesday.
Twitter reported Q3 revenue of $569 million, up 58% year-over-year. That beat its own forecast range of $545, and also beat analyst expectations of $559.6 million.
$559.6 million, up 61% year-over-year, and above the previously forecast range of $470 million to $485 million. It was also much higher than the $481.28 million that Wall Street had been expecting. It also reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.10, beating the $0.05 expected by analysts.
So what is the troubling investors? As usual, its weak user growth
Average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) were 320 million for the third quarter, up 11% year-over-year, and compared to 316 million in the previous quarter. Excluding SMS Fast Followers, which are users who people who sign up and access Twitter only through text message, MAUs were significantly lower, 307 million, for the third quarter, up 8% year-over-year, and compared to 304 million in the previous quarter.
By comparison, in the second quarter, the company had added eight million new users, including SMS Fast Followers.
For this quarter, mobile represented approximately 80% of total MAUs.
“We continued to see strong financial performance this quarter, as well as meaningful progress across our three areas of focus: ensuring more disciplined execution, simplifying our services, and better communicating thevalue of our platform,” Dorsey said in a statement. “We’ve simplified our roadmap and organization around a few big bets across Twitter, Periscope, and Vine that we believe represent our largest opportunities for growth.”
Once again, almost all of Twitter’s revenue came from advertising, which accounted for $513 million, an increase of 60% year-over-year. Excluding the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, advertising revenue would have increased 67%. Mobile advertising revenue was 86% of total advertising revenue.
Data licensing and other revenue totaled $56 million, an increase of 37 % year-over-year. Of Twitter’s total revenue, $199 million was international, an increase of 65% year-over-year.
Twitter is expecting revenue in the range of $695 million to $710 million for the fourth quarter of 2015, and adjusted EBITDA is projected to be in the range of $155 million to $175 million.
Stayed tuned as we will be covering Dorsey’s first earnings calls as full-time CEO of Twitter.
(Image source: about.twitter.com)
