Shares of Twitter surged in after-hours trading, climbing as much as 7% to $44.04 per share
Twitter released the earnings results from its fourth quarter after closing bell tonight, posting adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share on $479.1 million in revenue for the quarter. Analysts had been expecting the micro-blogging platform to post earnings of 6 cents per share on $453.8 million in revenue for the fourth quarter.
Key metrics from Twitter’s earnings report
Net losses were $125 million or 20 cents per share. Adjusted EBITDA was $141 million for the fourth quarter. For the full year, Twitter reported a net loss of 96 cents per share and non-GAAP earnings of 14 cents per share.
All of Wall Street has been anxiously waiting to see what Twitter’s user growth looked like during the December quarter. The micro-blogging platform reported a 20% increase in active monthly users, which grew to 288 million. Twitter said average mobile monthly active users were 80% of total users. Timeline viewers rose 23% to 182 billion, while ad revenue per thousand Timeline views surged 60% to $2.37.
Twitter expects to see revenue of between $440 million and $450 million for the current quarter and between $2.3 billion and $2.35 billion for the full year. Analysts are expecting to see revenue of $449.5 million for the current quarter and $2.29 billion for the full year.
Twitter looks outside for new revenue
As Twitter deals with decelerating user growth, management has trying to convince investors that it can successfully monetize logged-out users. This week Twitter began testing a new home page in an attempt to lure in those logged-out users and, hopefully, monetize them.
The micro-blogging platform also struck deals with other websites and apps to promote tweets outside of its own website, thus stretching out its tentacles further to take advantage of its presence on other websites.
Twitter’s stock price movement during the regular day today was especially interesting as it couldn’t stay above the 200-day moving average, reported MarketWatch‘s Tomi Kilgore. The average was $41.36, and Twitter surpassed that for the first time in more than three months. The first time Twitter shares closed under the 200-day moving average was on Oct. 28 in the wake of last quarter’s disappointment on user growth.
