The day maybe finally coming, the day that Twitter actually sees money start to roll in. Investors accustomed to seeing decline after decline were today pleasantly surprised to see a positive Q3 earnings report.
The social media platform saw revenues of $590m on adjusted earnings per share of $0.10. Monthly active users for the quarter were up four million from the previous quarter, totaling 330 million and equating to an increase of 4% year-over-year.
Although there was some bad news in the form of MAUs, analysts were expecting revenues of $586.73 million on EPS of $0.07. The surprise earnings beat was even sweeter when looking at the social media platform’s predictions for the final quarter of the year; adjusted EBITDA was put between $220m and $240m, capital expenditures are expected to be no more than $110m and, as Twitter put it, “we will likely be GAAP profitable.
“We continue to see improved performance as we execute across our strategic priorities. Audience and engagement trends remained positive despite tougher year-over-year comparables,” said Twitter in its letter to shareholders.
“We saw sustained recovery in the year-over-year growth rate for Twitter owned-and-operated (O&O) advertising revenue, as well as solid growth in data licensing and other revenue. Finally, we made further progress on increasing profitability as we reported our fi rst quarter of positive GAAP operating income, our narrowest GAAP net loss, as well as our highest adjusted EBITDA margins to date, despite the year-over-year decline in revenue.”
Investors, understandably, jumped on this good news, sending Twitter’s share price up 15%. All in all, Twitter could see out the year with a profitable quarter – monthly users are up and income from overseas grew by 6%.
Moving forward, chasing that profitable last quarter, Twitter will focus on making the platform safer and easier to use. Providing rich content will also be a core part of the strategy designed to drive engagement.
