Twitter, Inc (NYSE:TWTR) suffered a steep decline after the popular micro blogging company released its first financial results as a public company for the fourth quarter and full year 2013. Its stock price plummeted more than 16% to $55.09 per share after hours on Wednesday.
Investors were primarily disappointed by the slow growth rate of the monthly active users (MAUs) of the micro blogging company. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) said its MAUs increased 30% to $241 million as of December 31, 2014. The number is lower than the expected 36% growth rate to $253 million MAUs by Wall Street analysts.
Reuters quoted a statement from Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne, Agee & Leach who said, “What this report will do is it will question how mainstream is Twitter as a platform. Both in the U.S. and internationally, the monthly active user base did not grow as fast as people thought, and that has an impact on the number of timeline views.”
Financial results
During the fourth quarter, Twitter, Inc (NYSE:TWTR) generated $243 million revenue, an increase of 116% year-over-year. The micro blogging company $10 million net income or $0.02 earnings per share on non-GAAP basis.
Twitter’s earnings and revenue for the quarter beat the consensus estimates of Wall Street analysts of -$0.2 losses per share on $217.82 million revenue.
For the full year 2013, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) delivered $665 million revenue, up by 110% year-over-year. The company posted $34 million net loss of -$0.18 losses per share on non-GAAP basis.
In a statement, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costelo said, Twitter finished a great year with our strongest financial quarter to date. 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.”
According to the company, its advertising revenue increased 121% to $220 million. Its mobile advertising revenue accounts more than 75% of its total ad revenue.
Financial outlook
Twitter, Inc (NYSE:TWTR) estimated that it will be able to generate revenue in the range of $230 million to $240 million in the first quarter of 2014. The company expected to obtain $10 million to $16 million adjusted EBITDA.
For the full year, the company projected to deliver revenue in the range of $1.15 billion to $1.2 billion and adjusted EBITDA between $150 million to $180 million.
