Twitter Q4 Adj. Profit Beats Estimates, But Revenues Miss

(RTTNews) - Micro-blogging site Twitter Inc. (TWTR) on Thursday reported a loss for the fourth quarter that widened from last year, while revenues increased 1 percent.

However, adjusted earnings per share beat analysts' expectations, while revenues missed their estimates. In addition, Twitter's average monthly active users figure was almost flat with the previous quarter.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO said, "While revenue growth continues to lag audience growth, we are applying the same focused approach that drove audience growth to our revenue product portfolio, focusing on our strengths and the real-time nature of our service. This will take time, but we're moving fast to show results."

Twitter's fourth-quarter net loss widened to $167.05 million or $0.23 per share from net loss of $90.24 million or $0.13 per share in the year-ago period.

On an adjusted basis, earnings for the quarter were $118.60 million or $0.16 per share, compared to $114.62 million or $0.16 per share last year. On average, 33 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.12 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Revenues for the quarter increased 1 percent to $717 million from $710.4 million last year, but missed analysts' consensus estimate of $740.14 million.

Twitter said its average monthly active users were 319 million in the fourth quarter, up 4 percent year-over-year and also up slightly from 317 million in the previous quarter.

Twitter's average daily active usage grew 11 percent year-over-year, an acceleration from 7 percent in the third quarter, 5 percent in the second quarter and 3 percent in the first quarter of 2016.

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2017, Twitter projects adjusted EBITDA to be between $75 million and $95 million. The company did not specific revenue guidance for the quarter.

Twitter said it expects advertising revenue growth to continue to lag that of audience growth in 2017. Advertising revenue growth may be further impacted by escalating competition for digital ad spending and Twitter's re-evaluation of its revenue product feature portfolio, which could result in the de-emphasis of certain product features.