Nothing to see here — just Twitter talking about its first earnings report since the departure of Dick Costolo as CEO last month after pressure from investors unhappy with the company s growth and direction.
Many questions surround Twitter s scheduled release of its second-quarter results this afternoon: Did it see growth in users or revenue? Does the company know what it s doing — and how can it when it doesn t know who its next permanent CEO is? Co-founder Jack Dorsey is interim CEO, but he s also chief executive of Square, and Twitter s board has said it wants a full-time CEO. Also, how s this for turnover: A Financial Times report says the company has seen 450 employees leave in the past year.
Investors and other interested parties will be looking for updates about what was in progress before Costolo s exit. The San Francisco company s efforts to attract users and boost revenue include: Last month, it introduced pages for celebrities to hawk stuff, and dedicated product pages for users shopping pleasure. Also last month, it rolled out Project Lightning, a new, curated way for people to see tweets even when they aren t logged on. It has tried to goose ad revenue by adding auto-playing videos, as Queenie Wong wrote recently. It might be early, but these products could affect Twitter s third-quarter forecast.
But back to the second quarter. Analysts expectations for user growth reportedly range from 2 million to 8 million, compared with the 14 million users Twitter added in the first quarter, bringing its total monthly active users to 302 million.
Analysts expect profit of 4 cents a share on $481.5 million in revenue.
Twitter stock, which plunged 25 percent in April over the two days after it reported first-quarter earnings, have continued to fall in the past three months. Shares are up about 4.5 percent today, to $36.26, amid a good day for tech stocks.
Photo by Laura Oda/Bay Area News Group archives
