Twitter is a social network that, despite all of the millions upon millions of people that use it every single day, is still struggling to make much money out of it. With that said, it should come as something of a surprise that the firm has in fact managed to post some pretty positive figures during their Q3 2016 financials. Even with this positive news, the firm is still set to lay off 8 percent of their workforce, which confirms earlier reports that Twitter was looking to go down this route. As always, the layoffs are being positioned as a way to cut costs, and perhaps ironically, make more money when Q4 2016 and Q1 2017 financials pour in.
During Q3 2016, Twitter shares bought home 13 cents a share, which was up from the 9 cents a share that analysts on Wall Street had predicted. In total, Twitter bought home revenue of $616 Million, which was again, an increase over the predicted $606 Million. One aspect that Twitter doesn’t appear to be moving very quickly in is how many active monthly users they have, with the firm posting 317 Million active users in Q3 2016, a slight increase from the 313 Million active monthly users in Q2 2016. These figures might not seem like much of an increase over the figures that Twitter posted, but it’s a rare sight to see a company like Twitter, that everyone says is running out of luck, to punch about their weight and come home with an improvement over analysts’ expectations. With little guidance for Q4 2016 however, the optimistic outlook for the firm is likely to be short lived.
According to reports from Bloomberg, Twitter is to lay off 300 employees, which is roughly in the region of 8 percent of the total workforce. It’s thought that a lot of these layoffs will be felt in Twitter’s sales department as the company looks to diversify its product in things such as video streaming of events, with the Presidential Debates and NFL games being the first prime examples of that. Twitter is struggling to gain users, reporting the same amount of users – give or take – every Quarter, which is no doubt a concern for investors as well as the industry. As Snapchat appears to be readying a near $1 Billion IPO, Twitter could have bigger problems on their hands very shortly, but if media looks like the future, then the company at least know where to focus their events in the year ahead.