Twitter’s Demise Continues

TWITTER DORESY RETURNS

 

It seems that Twitter (TWTR) has been under siege by an army of bears. The company has desperately tried to solve its user growth problems ever since its 2013 IPO. For a while, it was able to distract shareholders from those problems by ramping up its revenue generating activities, but now it seems that no amount of revenue and earnings growth will make up for what Twitter lacks: a future.

The latest quarterly results are proof of that. Let's take a look at the highlights:

  • Earnings per share came in at $0.16, a 33% increase from last year and beating the consensus by $0.04.
  • Revenue was $710 million, which was in line with analyst expectations and a 48.2% increase year over year.
  • Q1 guidance is low: the company estimates Q1 revenue of $595 million to $610 million, below the $629.3 million consensus.
  • Q4 monthly active users (MAUs) were 320 million, up 9% year over year, but flat for the quarter. Excluding the SMS users, MAUs fell by 2% quarter over quarter and were up just 6% year over year.
  • 48% revenue growth is nothing to sneeze at, but the weak user growth is a major concern. Another valid problem is that Twitter doesn't seem to be doing anything to build a moat around its core product. That's one of the things that makes Facebook (FB) so valuable. In 2015, the social giant increased its spending drastically to build a moat around its popular site.

    But Twitter is unable to do that because it's too busy trying to put out the fires that keep sparking with its weak core product.

    What is Twitter doing to stop the bleeding?

    This is the $10.85 billion dollar question. The following was mentioned in Twitter's letter to shareholders:

    “We are going to fix the broken windows and confusing parts, like the [email protected] syntax and @reply rules, that we know inhibit usage and drive people away. We're going to improve the timeline to make sure you see the best Tweets, while preserving the timeliness we are known for … We're going to improve onboarding flows to make sure you easily find both your contacts and your interests. We're going to make Tweeting faster while making Tweets more expressive with both text and visual media.”

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