Twitter shares plunge despite rise in revenue and users

Twitter said late tonight that its quarterly revenue jumped 119 per cent to $250 million and its number of average monthly active users (MAUs) rose 25 per cent to 255 million.

However, the company’s shares plunged more than 10 per cent in after-hours trading as investors worried about its slowing rate of growth.

Monthly active users had risen 30 per cent in its last quarterly statement.

Twitter’s stock price, which went public at $26 last November, rose as high as $73 in December, but has lost much ground in recent months. It fell more than 10 per cent to $37.95 on tonight.

“The user growth numbers just weren’t good enough,” Shyam Patil, analyst at Wedbush Securities, told Reuters, adding that growth in Twitter’s international user numbers was particularly disappointing.

Twitter's quarterly “timeline views”, a measure of user engagement, rose 15 per cent to $157 billion in the first quarter of 2014. “Again, this number was weak… primarily international… this is something the company is going to have to address going forward,” said Patil.

Quarterly advertising revenue rose 125 per cent to $226 million, with mobile advertising making up 80 per cent of the total.

Twitter’s net quarterly loss widened to $132.4 million, or 23 cents a share, from $27 million, or 21 cents, a year earlier. Excluding certain items, though, the company broke even, beating analysts’ estimates of a 3 cent per share loss.

“We had a very strong first quarter. Revenue growth accelerated on a year over year basis fueled by increased engagement and user growth,” said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter.

“We also continue to rapidly increase our reach and scale. With the integration of MoPub, we now reach more than 1 billion iOS and Android users each month, making us one of the largest in-app mobile ad exchanges in the world and the only one at scale to offer native in-app advertising.”