Twitter reported first-quarter revenues of USD 436 million, up 74 percent from the year-earlier figure but lower than the company’s guidance of USD 440-450 million. Advertising revenues came in at USD 388 million, up 72 percent from last year’s figure of USD 226 million, of which some 89 percent came from mobile accounts. The messaging company's net loss widened to USD 162 million or 25 cents a share from USD 132 million or 23 cents a share a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA exceeded the company’s target for Q1, coming in at USD 104 million, up from USD 37 million a year ago, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 24 percent.
Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo blamed the company recently introduced products for the slowing revenue growth. “Revenue growth fell slightly short of our expectations due to lower-than-expected contributions from some of our newer direct response products,” he said. Twitter has revamped its app and launched new services to attract users, including the live-streaming video service Periscope and a recap feature. Periscope attracted 1 million users in its first 10 days but Costolo told investors it was still early days for many of its new products.
The company had a total of 302 million monthly active users in March, an increase of 18 percent year-on-year, after adding just 14 million users over the last quarter. Around 80 percent of users were on mobile. Twitter ended the quarter with a stable cash position, at USD 3.6 billion, the same as the previous quarter. However, the company was forced to lower its guidance for annual revenue from USD 2.30 billion to around USD 2.17 – 2.27 billion, saying that its direct response products were likely to keep underperforming throughout the year.
