Twitter made a profit for the first time in history

Twitter's quarterly financial results

Twitter published a report (pdf) with financial results for the IV quarter. 2017 In this event, there would be nothing remarkable if it were not for one fact - for the first time in its history, the company recorded quarterly profits. Almost 12 years before Twitter worked exclusively at a loss, that is, for the money of investors and shareholders.

Net profit for the IV quarter. 2017 was $ 91 million, which is why Twitter shares jumped sharply in price (+ 29% in one day). Revenue rose 2% to $ 731.6 million, although most analysts predicted a decline. The monthly audience has not changed and remained at the level of 330 million users, which turned out to be below expectations, although Twitter assures an increase in the daily audience. Like Facebook, Twitter has already exhausted its audience growth resources in the United States.


Quarterly change monthly audience Twitter
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According to experts , Twitter’s first profitable quarter is not a random fluctuation, but a possible indication that advertisers have begun to distribute their online advertising budgets beyond the traditional sites of Google and Facebook. This is an argument in a long-standing dispute whether small Internet companies can compete with the global dominance of Google and Facebook, which control two-thirds of the global Internet advertising market, and their combined capitalization exceeds a trillion dollars.

It turns out that small Internet companies have a chance to compete with giants. This is also indicated by the fact that Snapchat also recently announced an unexpected increase in the number of users and advertising revenues. Snap shares also jumped 48% in one day, although later, due to the massive profit taking by traders, there was a correction. Unlike Twitter, Snap has never finished a quarter with a profit. And in general, she finished the quarter for the first time no worse than analysts had predicted.

Twitter representatives say that the changes that have recently been made on the site in favor of advertisers helped to get plus. For example, advertisers liked doubling the maximum length of tweets from the previous 140 characters.