Twitter Is Newest Member of S&P 500

June 4, 2018

Twitter (ticker: TWTR) will ascend to the S&P 500, replacing Monsanto (MON), the S&P Dow Jones Indices said late Monday.

Netflix (NFLX) will replace Monsanto Company in the S&P 100.

The moves, effective Thursday, occurred as a result of Bayer AG's $62.5 billion acquisition of Monsanto.

Twitter shares jump after Goldman Sachs says account purge good for business, raises price target

- Goldman Sachs increases its price target on Twitter to $55 from $40 and says the company's efforts to drive and monetize user engagement will help contribute to 25 percent upside.
- The company has reportedly purged more than 70 million accounts in May and June as a part of its effort to rid the site of disinformation.
- MKM Partners also reiterates its buy rating on the stock and commended its efforts to eradicate "bad actors" on the site.

Twitter earnings: Will bot cleanup damage stock’s big run-up?

July 25, 2018

The massive rise in Twitter stock was put on hold last week, amid a report of the company removing 70 million accounts in May and June that suggested the move could result in a decline in Twitter’s active-user count. Wall Street currently forecasts the company will report 338.5 million monthly active users in second-quarter earnings due before the market opens on Friday; the company does not reveal its daily active user count.

In response to the Washington Post story, Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said, “Most accounts we remove are not included in our reported metrics as they have not been active on the platform for 30 days or more, or we catch them at sign up and they are never counted.” He added in a second tweet that if the company removed 70 million accounts from the numbers it does give to investors, the company would say so directly.

Twitter’s user numbers tend to be one of the most important metrics investors watch, and difficulty increasing that metric in recent years has cast a pall over the company. Twitter beat expectations for user growth in the first quarter, however, and has shown better profitability in recent quarters, helping the stock grow 76% so far this year.

Macquarie Capital analyst Benjamin Schachter wrote in a note to clients last week that removing fake accounts is a good thing for Twitter, but his team has concerns about overall use of the platform.

“Despite [President Donald] Trump being perhaps the most high-profile user possible, usage has not dramatically improved over the past couple of years (the U.S. had flat y/y growth in 1Q’18),” Schachter, who has the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock with a $42 price target, wrote. “We simply don’t see the product improvements having a dramatic impact on TWTR’s ability to attract new users (though it can, and likely is, helping to retain and improve the experience for current users).”

Earnings: Analysts polled by FactSet estimate second-quarter adjusted earnings of 16 cents a share on average. Contributors to Estimize, which crowdsources estimates from analysts, fund managers and academics, predict adjusted earnings of 19 cents a share on average. Twitter is expected to post a GAAP profit for the third consecutive quarter, which it had never done before the beginning of the current run.

Revenue: Analysts expect sales of $698 million on average, according to FactSet. The bulk of Twitter’s revenue is from advertising, which is expected to haul in $599 million, the majority from inventory that Twitter owns and operates; the company’s ad network is estimated to contribute $49 million to the top line. Analysts model second-quarter sales of $97 million for Twitter’s high-margin data-licensing segment. Estimize contributors model sales of $707.6 million on average.

Everything else: The beautiful game might contribute to an outsize quarter for Twitter, as the World Cup has historically, according to MKM Partners analyst Rob Sanderson. In the second quarter of 2014, the World Cup added $24 million to the top line and there’s little reason to expect anything different this year. In fact, says Sanderson, the upside is already baked into the stock price, and the company will benefit even more than 2014.

This year’s World Cup, wrote Sanderson in a note to clients Friday, will likely be more lucrative for the microblogging platform because Twitter’s service is better, there is more content, video ads are worth more and the company is selling more ads outside of the U.S.

Outside of the company’s ad business, the company’s data-licensing segment has been a boon of late because of its thick margins and potential upside — when the company went public years ago, investors saw Twitter’s vast trove of data the real prize beyond ads. Even though the company hasn’t managed to turn it into a cash fire hose, it’s still worth keeping an eye on.

JP Morgan says Twitter is a top pick into earnings Friday

July 25, 2018

Twitter shares will keep going higher, even after their stunning rally so far this year, as the company benefits from its platform changes, according to J.P. Morgan.

The firm reiterated its overweight rating on the social media company’s stock, predicting Twitter will generate second-quarter sales above expectations.

“We believe Twitter’s platform continues to strengthen, led by product improvements such as increasing video content, bookmarks, and information quality efforts, along with more compelling returns to advertisers. We remain positive on the stock heading into 2Q,” analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note to clients Wednesday. “TWTR remains one of our top ideas along w/ FB & AMZN, all of which are on the J.P. Morgan US Equity Analyst Focus List.”

Anmuth reiterated his $50 price target for Twitter shares, representing 18.6 percent upside to Tuesday’s close.

The analyst downplayed recent concerns over Twitter’s account removals. He predicts the company will report second-quarter sales of $714 million versus the $698 million Wall Street consensus.

Earlier this month The Washington Post reported Twitter was ramping up its efforts in closing fake accounts. The article said about 70 million accounts were suspended in May and June, with a similar pace continuing in July.

Twitter's chief financial officer, Ned Segal, later clarified in a tweet that "most accounts we remove are not included in our reported metrics as they have not been active on the platform for 30 days or more, or we catch them at sign up and they are never counted."

The “user account clean-up is positive long-term,” Anmuth said. “While TWTR confirmed it shut down 70M accounts in May and June, these changes are beneficial to the overall health of the platform long-term, and shouldn’t have much impact on reported MAUs in the near term.”

Twitter User Numbers Slip as It Shuts Fake Accounts; Stock Drops

Company says monthly users fell by a million in the second quarter, could continue to fall

July 27, 2018

Twitter Inc. said its number of monthly users dropped in the second quarter and could continue to fall as it purges fake accounts -— illustrating the challenges social-media companies face in trying to clean up their platforms.

Twitter’s number of monthly active users world-wide fell by a million from three months ago to 335 million, Twitter’s first drop since the second quarter of 2017.

Despite the decline, Twitter posted its third-straight quarterly profit —- after years of losses -— which the company attributed to its momentum with advertisers.

Social-media companies have faced public scrutiny over privacy concerns and fake accounts, particularly in light of the revelations of Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Twitter attributed its drop in monthly users largely to its efforts at “improving the health of the public conversation” on the platform. It also cited Europe’s tough new privacy law.

Twitter expects monthly active users to drop again in the third quarter, by mid-single-digit millions, which would mark its first-ever consecutive declines.

The social-media company said net income was $100.1 million -— including a hefty tax benefit of $42 million in Brazil —- compared with a loss of $116.5 million a year earlier. Twitter said adjusted profit was 17 cents a share, matching estimates from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.[

Revenue climbed 24% to $710.5 million, $601 million of it from advertising. Analysts had expected $696.2 million in overall revenue.

Twitter said the second quarter was the first in which revenue from international ads exceeded that from ads in the U.S., a trend it expects to continue in the near term.

The company said the number of people using Twitter daily rose by 11% from a year earlier, though it doesn’t provide the actual number of daily users.

Twitter Stock Keeps Getting Hammered and Even Strong Earnings Might Not Help

Oct. 23, 2018 8:00 a.m. ET

The last time Twitter (TWTR) announced quarterly results, it posted a 24% jump in revenue and a solid profit. For that, its stock was clobbered.

Such is life for an advertising-based social media company not named Facebook (FB). Twitter stock has tumbled 32% since late July when the San Francisco-based company said its monthly active user (MAU) count declined slightly from the prior quarter, to 335 million worldwide.

Twitter blamed the decline on a spike in suspensions of suspicious accounts as part of a concerted company crackdown to minimize misinformation and abusive content. Over the last 12 months, Twitter shares are still up 62%.

A consensus of analysts polled by FactSet expect earnings of 14 cents per share and revenue of $700 million -- up 40% and 18.6%, respectively, from a year ago.

But expect the focus, once again, to be on user growth. On that front, analysts expect monthly users to slide again, to 333 million.

Long-term investors would do better to focus on Twitter’s revenue strategy, though.

“Twitter has been held to an unfair preoccupation on MAUs when its earnings-per-user has never been better,” Nate Elliott, principal at Nineteen Insights, a social-media research and advisory firm, told Barron’s.

The company has been growing ad sales thanks to more video content, especially exclusive sports-broadcasting rights for the World Cup and NFL. Wall Street expects Twitter’s third-quarter ad sales to be $592 million, with total revenue of $700 million.

The company’s overall share of digital ad spending is 0.9%, about the same as last year, according to comScore.

But Twitter faces increased competition as it tries to grow its advertising market share. The company may be vulnerable to inroads in advertising by Amazon.com (AMZN), for instance, which has quickly become the third-largest digital ad platform after Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google and Facebook (FB), according to research firm eMarketer. The firm forecasts U.S. advertisers could spend $4.61 billion on Amazon’s ad platform this year, up 145% year over year.

Twitter Sheds Users Again in Fake-Account Purge

Oct. 25, 2018 7:01 a.m. ET

Twitter Inc. reported its first consecutive quarterly drop in users, losing more than it had expected and signaling further declines to come as it continues to purge fake accounts.

Even so, Twitter on Thursday said it boosted revenue and swung to a profit in the third quarter as it extracted more advertising revenue out of its existing users. The results sent Twitter shares soaring about 11% to $30.50 in premarket trading.

Twitter’s monthly active users world-wide fell by nine million from the second quarter to 326 million — its steepest decline ever. Three months ago, it had said it expected monthly users to decline by mid-single-digit millions. Its previous biggest drop was by two million in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The results reflect the toll on Twitter’s user base as the company combats what it calls spammy and suspicious accounts, particularly in the months leading up to the U.S. midterm elections. In the prior quarter, signs of slowing growth at social-media companies including Twitter , Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc. sent their stocks careening.

Twitter blamed the drop in monthly users in part on the same factors that plagued it last quarter — removing fake accounts and the impact of Europe’s new privacy law. A clampdown on automated usage such as bots, as well as a since-resolved bug in email notifications, also contributed to the decline, the company said.

Twitter expects its work on removing fake accounts and the privacy law to continue to drive down users in the current quarter, leading to a decline in the mid-single-digit millions.

Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said cleaning up the platform ultimately helps drive user growth. “We continue to make really steady progress against some of the health initiatives that we’re seeing, most notably this quarter around suspicious sign-ups,” he told analysts.

Total revenue in the third quarter climbed 29% to $758.1 million, the majority from ads and the largest increase since the first quarter of 2016. Analysts had expected $702.6 million, according to estimates from Thomson Reuters.

Net income swelled to $789.2 million, inflated by a $683 million tax benefit, compared with a loss of $21.1 million a year ago. Adjusted profit came to 21 cents a share, well above the 14 cents analysts had expected, according to Thomson Reuters.

Twitter’s improvements to the product are having an impact, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said. “They are throwing you the right tweets when you open up the app and are better at showing you ads. That’s translating into substantial revenue beats,” he said.

Daily active users, meanwhile, grew by 9% from a year ago, breaking a seven-quarter streak of gains between 10% and 14%.

Twitter, which doesn’t disclose an actual number for daily users, attributed the weaker growth to a decline in people who primarily use the service only via web browsers. It said such users tend to be less valuable than those who access Twitter via the web and mobile devices. Growth in those users increased by a double-digit percentage, the company said.

For the fourth quarter, Twitter projected adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of between $320 million and $340 million.

Investors will likely be scrutinizing Twitter's monthly active users growth. While the company roughly met analyst estimates for MAUs this quarter at 321 million, the metric was down from last year's 330 million MAUs, likely due to recent initiatives that prioritize user well-being over engagement.

Twitter said Thursday it will stop reporting MAUs after the first quarter because it will switch to a new metric, monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) to reflect its audience.

Twitter noted it is now reporting mDAUs rather than daily active users. The company said mDAUs measures "Twitter users who log in and access Twitter on any given day through Twitter.com or our Twitter applications that are able to show ads."

Twitter’s Push for Healthier Discourse Pays Off With Revenue Jump

Feb. 7, 2019

Twitter Inc. reported record quarterly revenue and its first full year of profitability Thursday, signs the company’s efforts to promote healthy discourse on the platform appear to be paying off.

The company also for the first time disclosed its number of daily users: 126 million, a figure Twitter said was up 1.6% from the previous quarter.

The figure makes it easier to compare Twitter with its social-media peers Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc., which have 1.52 billion and 186 million daily users, respectively. Twitter said it measures its number of daily users differently than other companies, because it counts only users who can view ads.

Revenue rose 24% to $908.8 million in the fourth quarter, typically the heaviest spending period for advertisers, up from $731.6 million a year earlier. Those results topped analysts’ projections of $867 million, according to FactSet.

Even so, Twitter’s stock slid nearly 11% in morning trading as investors homed in on the company’s declining numbers of monthly users and its revenue forecast for the current quarter.

Twitter said its number of monthly users, the metric it has released for years, fell 1.5% to 321 million from three months ago. Twitter has struggled for years with little to no momentum in building up its user base. It plans to stop disclosing monthly users after the current quarter.

Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said last year the company’s priority was to reduce the amount of abuse that occurs on the platform. Although those efforts sometimes result in closing the accounts of bad actors, other users tend to spend more time on Twitter when there is less harassment. Marketers also say they are in favor of the changes, because they don’t like advertising alongside negative content.

Twitter projected a sequential decline in revenue in the first quarter to between $715 million and $775 million. While that would be up from $665 million a year earlier, the range’s midpoint of $745 million sits below the $764.93 million analysts had penciled, according to Refinitiv.

Doing away with the monthly user number could suggest Twitter doesn’t like the trends it is seeing in that area, raising questions about how it will grow daily users from a shrinking pool, said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at R.W. Baird.

He also pointed to higher expenses Twitter is facing in 2019 as it combats abuse, adds new features and digests its growing head count. Twitter, which grew its employee number about 16% last year, said it expects operating expenses up about 20% in 2019.

Those costs could weigh on margins, Mr. Sebastian said.

Twitter’s profit in the fourth quarter increased to $255.3 million, or 33 cents a share, from $91.1 million, or 12 cents a share, a year earlier.

Twitter earnings: Will another strong start to the year squelch user-growth fears?

Apr 22, 2019

Twitter Inc. has a history of starting strong, and this year should be no exception.

The social-media company hasn’t had an easy time adding new users, but it tends to post its strongest user-growth numbers during the first few months of the year. That bodes well for the company’s Tuesday morning earnings report, according to Barclays analyst Ross Sandler.

Last year, Twitter added 6 million new monthly active users in the March period, the only quarter when it didn’t shed users. That more recent streak of losses is likely a big reason why the company is replacing its declining count of monthly users with a new metric, “monetizable daily active users,” or mDAUs, which is on a healthier trajectory. This will be the last quarter in which Twitter gives a count of its monthly active users alongside the new mDAU number.

Though the way Twitter posts user numbers is starting to change, Sandler expects that the company will show off another strong winter quarter. He estimates that the company had 130 million mDAUs as of the end of March, up 4 million from the prior quarter. That would mark the company’s highest sequential additions in a year, as Twitter continues its efforts to improve the health of its platform.

Sandler, who rates the stock at underweight with a $27 target, expects to see some improvement in the financials as well. “Checks continue to indicate that Twitter is doing a much better job selling its mix of brand and performance in 2019,” he wrote. His main concern is that the company’s results will be compared with a tough benchmark, since Twitter benefited from the Olympics a year ago.

Earnings: Analysts tracked by FactSet expect Twitter to report 15 cents a share in adjusted earnings, down from 16 cents a share last year. Twitter has beaten the FactSet earnings consensus in each of the past 17 quarters. According to Estimize, the average projection calls for 18 cents.

Revenue: The FactSet consensus calls for $774 million in revenue, while the Estimize consensus is for $780 million. Management’s forecast calls for $715 million to $775 million in revenue. A year ago, Twitter reported March-quarter revenue of $655 million.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet are calling for a 15% rise in overall advertising revenue, to $661 million.

Twitter blames ad targeting issues for earnings miss, sending stock down 20%

Oct 24 2019

Key Points
.

• Twitter reported a third quarter plagued by product issues and advertising “headwinds.” Platform bugs weighed on revenue and ultimately led the company to an earnings miss on the top and bottom lines.
• The company warned shareholders that headwinds will continue through the rest of the year and could “bleed over” into 2020.
• Monetizable daily active users are growing, and Twitter is upping capital investment.

Twitter bans political ads after Facebook refused to do so

Oct 30 2019

Twitter is axing political ads from its site, CEO Jack Dorsey announced Wednesday.

Twitter’s stock dropped more than 2% in after hours trading following the announcement.

The move sets Twitter in stark contrast to Facebook, which has received criticism from lawmakers and its own employees in recent weeks over its policy to neither fact check nor remove political ads placed by politicians. Facebook has argued it should not be the one to make decisions about its users’ speech and that politician’s speech is newsworthy.

Dorsey explained the company’s reasoning behind the decision in a series of tweets.

“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet,” Dorsey wrote. “Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”

Dorsey said it would be “not credible” for Twitter to tell users it’s committed to stopping the spread of misinformation while allowing advertisers to target users with political ads just because they’ve paid Twitter to do so.

In his final tweet on the topic, Dorsey said pointedly, “This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”


. . . .

Hackers take over Twitter accounts of Gates, Musk, Biden, Obama, Apple and others in crypto scam

July 15, 2020

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos had their Twitter accounts hacked Wednesday afternoon in an apparent cryptocurrency giveaway scam. Other accounts including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Apple, Uber, and Square’s CashApp were also hacked.

The tweet below was posted from Gates’ account at 1:34 p.m. PT, but was then deleted. The same tweet from Gates appeared at 1:48 p.m. PT.



“We can confirm that this tweet was not sent by Bill Gates,” a spokesperson for Bill Gates told GeekWire. “This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing. Twitter is aware and working to restore the account.”

A tweet from Musk was sent out just before 1:30 p.m. PT and was also deleted, before another appeared at 1:50 p.m. PT. Another similar tweet appeared at 2:19 p.m. PT.



Biden, Obama, and Bezos were also hacked:








Here are the tweets from Apple and Uber’s accounts:






More than $100,000 had been funneled to the bitcoin address included in the tweets.

Twitter stock was down more than 3% in after-hours trading.



[ . . . ]

Pinterest Stock Is Flying After Earnings and Revenue Soar

Oct. 29, 2020

Pinterest beat expectations for revenue on a rebound in advertising spending, boosting its shares 31% in premarket trading Thursday.

Revenue jumped 58% in the third quarter, to $443 million, and the company said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to be 60% higher than the comparable period in 2019.

Social media apps are attracting more users as pandemic restrictions force people to isolate and spend more time alone. Monthly active users rose 37% from last year, reaching 442 million in the third quarter. That is also up from 416 million in the second quarter.

Pinterest said advertiser demand is recovering and added that it got a boost from expanding internationally. Revenue from international operations rose 145%.

Average revenue per user rose 31% in the U.S. and 66% internationally.

The photo-sharing site reported a per-share loss of 16 cents in the quarter. Adjusted earnings, however, came in at 13 cents, while analysts expected profit of 3 cents a share on revenue of $383.5 million. In the second quarter, Pinterest reported revenue of $272 million.

Last week, Snap (SNAP) said advertisers had resumed spending again, helping send its shares soaring.

Pinterest projects 60% sales growth in fourth quarter as ad sales rebound

Wed, October 28, 2020, 11:32 PM PDT

(Reuters) - Image-sharing company Pinterest Inc projected a 60% sales growth for the current quarter, off the back of a healthy rebound in ad spending by businesses after the early months of COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in the industry.

The forecast, which the company termed an 'informal' one, compares to a 35% growth modeled by Wall Street analysts, according to Refinitiv data.

Pinterest said it benefited as advertisers redirected spending to its platform following a social media ad boycott campaign that began in July.

A long list of companies have pulled advertising from Facebook Inc, in support of a campaign that called out the social media giant for not doing enough to stop hate speech on its platforms. Some companies have returned since.

"Advertisers tell us that Pinterest is brand safe relative to other consumer internet platforms," Chief Financial Officer Todd Morgenfeld said.

Pinterest also noted it gained four million monthly active users (MAUs) in late September as younger users turned to the platform to get design ideas for customized wallpapers for Apple Inc's new iOS version for iPhones.

Monthly active users jumped 37% to 442 million during the third quarter.

Revenue in the United States, the company's largest market, jumped 49% to $374 million. It reported average revenue of $1.03 per user, above FactSet estimates of 90 cents.

Pinterest's total revenue jumped 58% to $443 million, well ahead of analysts' estimates of $383.5 million.