Twitter just reported earnings for the first quarter of 2022, in what could be one of its last reports as a public company after its board agreed to sell to Elon Musk for $44 billion.
Here are the key numbers:
- Earnings per share: 4 cents, adjusted vs 3 cents expected, according to a Refinitiv survey of analysts
- Revenue: $1.2 billion vs $1.23 billion expected, according to Refinitiv
- Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs): 229 million vs 226.9 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Shares of Twitter rose 1% Thursday.
Twitter missed analyst revenue estimates, reporting 1.2 billion versus the 1.23 billion analysts were expecting, according to Refinitiv. But it beat estimates for earnings per share, at 4 cents, adjusted compared to 3 cents expected.
The company said the 229 million mDAUs it reported in the quarter represents a 15.9% increase from the same period last year. In the U.S. mDAUs were up 6.4% from the prior year's quarter, at 39.6 million. International mDAUs came in at 189.4 million, up 18.1% from the year before.
It also corrected previously reported mDAU numbers that overcounted some accounts from Q1 2019 through Q4 2021. Twitter said the error, which incorrectly reported roughly 1.4 million to 1.9 million extra mDAUs per quarter during that period, was made after launching a feature allowing users to easily switch between their separate accounts. As a result, the company said that during that period, all linked accounts were counted as mDAUs when an action was made by the primary account.
Before the deal was formally announced on Monday, some analysts speculated that Twitter might have wanted to finalize the deal before reporting earnings this weak, anticipating a disappointing quarter.
Snap reported last week that its revenue was impacted by macroeconomic trends weighing on advertisers, which could similarly affect Twitter.
Though it could still take months for Musk's deal to buy Twitter to close, the company canceled its usual earnings conference call in light of Monday's acquisition news. It expects the deal to close this year.
Twitter also said it would not provide forward-looking guidance and is withdrawing earlier goals and outlook it has provided.
Musk has signaled he'd like to use his ownership to make Twitter a more open platform, both through transparency in its algorithms and processes and in being more tolerant of different views.
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