Twitter exceeds sales projections in third quarter

Bloomberg

Twitter Inc. topped estimates for earnings and revenue in the third quarter amid higher spending from advertisers, marking a much-needed boost for the social-networking site after months of scrutiny from lawmakers and criticism about fake or offensive accounts. The shares rose in early trading.
Monthly active users averaged 326 million, San Francisco-based Twitter said in a statement. That’s a decrease of 9 million from the second quarter. Twitter warned in its July earnings report of a continued drop in the metric as a result of efforts to clean up its service and stricter privacy rules in Europe. The company said those trends will continue and lead to another decline in monthly users for the fourth quarter.
Twitter’s financial health has been consistently improving in recent months, benefiting from a push to add more live video and personalised content. The social network’s 29 percent jump in revenue in the recent period marks the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, and Twitter has reported positive net income for four straight quarters. While sales and earnings have grown stronger, Twitter has suffered from a drop in user metrics, especially after purging its ranks to eliminate fake accounts — an effort that continues ahead of the US midterm elections in November. “We have a more engaged audience and we are delivering a better return on investment for advertisers,” Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said in an interview. “We are now seeing the fruits of our labor and going into the fourth quarter we have the wind in our backs.”
Earlier this month Twitter said it removed about 50 accounts in August that misrepresented themselves on the site as members of various state Republican parties. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey told members of the US Congress in September that “massive shifts” would be required in how the platform operates, in response to questions about Russian meddling in the 2016 election and complaints by US President Donald Trump and some conservative Republicans that Twitter and other social media companies supp- ress or reduce the visibility of their opinions.