Twitter released a total of four documents to its investor site today pertaining to its 2017 Q1 report and looks to be doing relatively well, despite some loss in revenue year-over-year. The company highlights four key points in particular for shareholders. First, the size of the service’s audience and number or participants have continued along an expected path of accelerated growth. That may or may not be down to the shareholder report’s other highlights. Via the report, Twitter says that it has “made meaningful progress” in the identification and removal of abusive accounts and has been updating the service itself, catering to user needs and simplifying the social medium’s use. In any case, active daily use has risen by 11% more than it did in the same quarter last year – rounding out at a 14% increase year-over-year. Monthly active use has also increased by 9 million, about 6%, from last quarter. That brings the total active monthly users to just over 328 million.
As mentioned above, however, Twitter also lost some revenue year-over-year for Q1 2017. Twitter puts its first quarter revenue at $548 million. Unfortunately, that number is lower by 8% from last year. According to the documents, “quarterly GAAP net loss was $62 million.” Meanwhile, non-GAAP net income came out to about $82 million – at about 11 cents per “diluted share.” A lot of that decrease in revenue probably stems from the company’s loss in advertising revenue specifically, which fell 11 percent from last year to $474 million. Some of the loss in revenue could also be down to a 13 percent year-over-year decrease in U.S.-based revenue, despite international growth at 2 percent for the same period. However, with the company’s rapid growth and continuous improvements, that isn’t likely to remain a problem for long. The report also shows a cost-per-engagement cost decrease in advertising of 63 percent, while ad engagement is up 139 percent. Additionally, the company’s second full quarter including live-streaming of video content, as revealed in the documents, has viewing up by 31 percent over Q4 of last year. Those streams reached more than 45 million unique viewers, across over 450 events, which is an accomplishment in its own right.
As to the rest of the year, Twitter expects advertising revenue to grow with “meaningful lag” relevant to audience growth well into the second quarter. The company expects capital expenditures to range somewhere between $300 million and $400 million. “Stock-based compensation” is expected to drop year-over-year by between 20 and 25 percent – with that compensation resting between $115 million and $125 million in Q2. While revenue is down for Q1 2017 – a first since the company went public – the company and its social media audience continue to grow at an accelerated rate. Twitter is betting on that growth to turn a profit. Readers wanting to take a closer look at Twitter’s Q1 in-depth documentation for themselves can hit the source link below.