Because the Twitter accounts remain in the dark
Twitter saw an increase in daily users, but narrowly missed revenue expectations in the last three months of 2021, when the new CEO took over.
Twitter users are growing daily, but fourth quarter 2021 earnings and revenue are below expectations.
The company reported fourth quarter and full year results early Thursday. The quarterly is the first under the leadership of new CEO Parag Agrawal, who took over from Jack Dorsey who resigned from his position in November . Twitter closed the fourth quarter with $ 1.57 billion in revenues but with profits that stopped at 176 million, -34% compared to last year. The social network has 217 million active users.
In early trading on Thursday, Twitter's stock was up more than 1% to around $ 38.35. Performance was fueled by the announcement of a $ 4 billion share buyback. Twitter, which has roughly 800 million shares outstanding and a market capitalization of nearly $ 29 billion, wants the new buyback to replace a $ 2 billion 2020 program of which about $ 819 million remained.
All the details.
REVENUES GROW BUT EXPECTATIONS ARE LACKING
Twitter posted revenue of $ 1.56 billion in the last three months of 2021, a 22% increase from the previous year but lower than analysts' expectations of $ 1.6 billion. Twitter's revenue for the whole of 2021 was $ 5.08 billion.
AS WELL AS THE PROFITS
The company ended last year's fourth quarter with earnings of $ 181.7 million and earnings per share of 21 cents (33 cents per share adjusted for one-time earnings and costs). That is below the 35 cents per share provided for by the consensus.
INCREASE USERS
The company announced that its daily user base increased 2.8% from the previous quarter to 217 million.
The number of Twitter users was about 1 million lower than analysts' expectations, but it was still higher in the third quarter, when the company reported 211 million daily active users.
CEO Parag Agrawal, who took the helm of the social media company from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in November, attributed the performance to behind-the-scenes improvements in Twitter operations.
EXPECTATIONS FOR THE FIRST QUARTER 2022
For the first quarter of 2022, Twitter expects revenue between $ 1.17 billion and $ 1.27 billion. Analysts expect $ 1.26 billion on average, according to Reuters .
FORECASTS FOR 2023
Agrawal expressed confidence that Twitter is on track to meet its ambitious goal of $ 7.5 billion in annual revenue and 315 million daily users by 2023.
IN CONTRAST WITH THE META TREND (FACEBOOK)
While the social media platform has been missing out on revenue and earnings relative to Wall Street's goals, Twitter's performance stands in contrast to Facebook's parent company Meta. Last week, Meta posted disappointing results that suggested its growth may have stabilized, prompting investors to cut more than a quarter from its market valuation. For the first time in its history, Facebook's daily active users have decreased. The company had 1.93 billion daily users in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 1.92 billion users in the third quarter.
NEXT CHALLENGES
As the New York Times points out , investors saw Meta's earnings report as a wake-up call to the social media industry, but Twitter said Apple's privacy changes had little impact on its business. advertising.
Like other social media companies, Twitter faces challenges brought about by changes in Apple's privacy policies that make it harder for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. The Apple feature asks iPhone and iPad users to grant permission to apps that want to track them. Meta partly blamed Apple's changes for its disappointing fourth-quarter earnings. On Thursday, Twitter said improvements made to its products have helped reduce the impact, although there is still a lot of work to be done. Last summer, the companyintroduced Twitter Blue , its first paid service, with which customers will get exclusive features.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/twitter-conti-quarto-trimestre/ on Fri, 11 Feb 2022 11:18:58 +0000.