By Jessica Menton - Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) on Thursday reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of 2 cents per share on revenue of $243 million, compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 2 cents on sales of 218 million, according to analysts polled by Reuters.
"Twitter finished a great year with our strongest financial quarter to date," said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. "We are the only platform that is public, real-time, conversational and widely distributed and I'm excited by the number of initiatives we have underway to further build upon the Twitter experience."
Expectations are high for the social networking giant, following Twitter's initial public offering on Nov. 7, 2013, as this is the company’s first quarterly report as a public company. The stock soared 73 percent during its first day of trading in November to close at $44.90 a share, after jumping as much as $50 from the IPO price of $26 set ahead of its debut. The microblogging company is valued at $25 billion.
Twitter is scheduled to host a conference call with shareholders at 5:00 pm Eastern on Feb. 5, 2014, to discuss its fourth quarter earnings results, and analysts and investors will be looking for two things: usage base and mobile space.
“It’s two things with them. Number one is what does there usage base look like. Has the IPO promoted them to a level where suddenly there’s more and more people that are getting on Twitter? We find Twitter’s starting to get a lot the younger set. Facebook is losing them and Twitter is picking them up,” said Keith Bliss, senior vice president and director of sales & marketing at Cuttone & Co., Inc.
During the fourth-quarter, Twitter announced revenue came in at $243 million, up 116 percent year-over-year. For the same period, the company issued a quarterly net loss of $511 million on an earnings-per-share loss of $1.41. Meanwhile, non-GAAP net income came in at $10 million on non-GAAP EPS of 2 cents.
For the full 2013 fiscal year, the company reported a net loss of $645 million, or an EPS loss of $3.41, and a non-GAAP net loss of $34 million, or an EPS loss of 18 cents. Full year revenue came in at $665 million, up 110 percent year-over-year.
“We’re going to be looking at what they’re doing in the mobile space, how much of the ad revenue is coming from that, and more importantly Twitter will be given a honeymoon so to speak for a few quarters as long as they’re taking that revenue and reinvesting it in the platform to produce cash generating, revenue generating types of services later on,” added Bliss. “What are they doing in the business space?”
On Thursday, shares of Twitter plunged 13.16 percent to $57.29 ahead of the company’s earnings call after the stock closed the session down 0.53 percent to $65.97.
Also after the closing bell, other notable companies reporting earnings results include The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) and Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP).