Twitter Inc. (TWTR) has been poorly managed for some time many would agree. Now it appears Jack Dorsey is finally shaking things up at the microblogging site that involves a bit more ingenuity than merely increasing the number of characters per tweet….
Earlier today, vit was reported that a slew of top people would be leaving the company. They include: Twitter’s head of product (Kevin Weil), media (Katie Stanton), and engineering (Alex Roetter) are leaving the company. Reports are mixed on whether they were fired or
are leaving on their own accord but the head of product and marketing positions are reportedly going to be filled with interim replacements. Twitter is expected to name new board members as well, including someone reported to be “a high-profile media personality”, is it Oprah or someone else? The name is unknown currently. Re/Code states: Sources said she was a well-known exec from a big brand company, but Re/code could not determine who that is. (We have some good guesses, butRe/code tries hard not to guess.)
Twitter is also reportedly bringing on a new CMO soon to take over the role from CFO Anthony Noto, who is famous for his failed DM some time ago.
Stifel responded to the news with the following comment:
While we may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, we don’t see how the departure of the heads of three major business divisions can be viewed as a positive in the middle of an attempted business turnaround. We downgrade Twitter shares to Hold. Sorry.
The WSJ notes:
In a recent note, Deutsche Bank opined:
Twitter sits atop the “highly-speculative contrarian long idea” list for 2016 in consumer internet. Same as last year, the only thing that could potentially drive a re-rating & a change in the negative narrative is re-accelerating MAU growth, the timing of which seems to be nearly impossible to predict. However, at 10x our below-cons 2017 EBITDA, we think valuation reflects the well-documented concerns, even if we get a guide-below for FY16 which is largely expected at this point. We patiently wait to see what new products Jack Dorsey can ship to close the gap between core DAUs & the 1B mainstream non-Twitter users.
