Twitter shares soar 16% on breaking $1bn sales in quarter

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Culliford

Twitter pulled in $1bn (€907m) in quarterly revenue for the first time, beating expectations as efforts to make its platform more user-friendly brought in more people, and sending its shares up 16% at one stage.

Twitter recorded most of its revenue growth in the US, a major market where the company will face scrutiny this year over how it tackles misinformation ahead of the presidential election in November.

The company has continued efforts to boost sign-ups through measures such as allowing people to follow topics, and by trying to clean up abusive content.

Late last year, it launched a feature for users to hide certain replies on their tweets.

Twitter has also focused on relevant content and notifications, which has boosted average monetisable daily active users, or users who see ads when logged in through twitter.com or Twitter applications. That metric rose to 152 million in the fourth quarter from 126 million a year earlier, beating the average analyst expectation of 147.5 million.

Quarterly revenue here grew 11% from a year earlier to over $1bn, while total advertising revenue was $885m, an increase of 12% year-over-year. The company, however, forecast first-quarter revenue between $825m and $885m, largely below the Wall Street estimates.

Rolling out new features at a faster pace is one of Twitter’s top priorities for the year, chief executive Jack Dorsey said during an earnings call with analysts. Twitter’s total US revenue rose 17% to $591m, compared with a 3% uptick in international revenue. In November, Twitter banned political ads amid growing pressure on social media companies to stop accepting commercials containing misleading or false information.

But this week’s Iowa caucuses showed the platform was still being used to spread false allegations of voter fraud.

In its filings, Twiter said among the risks facing the company was its possible exposure to greater than anticipated tax liabilities following October’s agreement by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to work towards global tax reform, including transfer pricing rules.

“This development may result in changes to long-standing tax principles, which could adversely affect our effective tax rate or result in higher cash tax liabilities,” it said. Twitter has significant presence in Ireland.

Reuters and Irish Examiner