Twitter was close to profitability in the three-month period ending September 30th, the social media giant revealed on Thursday as part of its latest consolidated financial report. Twitter’s revenue declined for the third consecutive quarter year-on-year and amounted to $590 million, down four percentage points compared to Q3 2016, yet its loss barely surpassed $21 million, i.e. less than a fifth of the $116.5 million deficit posted for the second quarter of the year or the $107.2 million loss recorded over the same period last year. Despite a weaker revenue performance in terms of yearly differences, Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey hailed the company’s ability to bounce back and return to revenue growth in a prepared statement published alongside the firm’s Q3 2017 financials. Mr. Dorsey was likely referring to the fact that while Twitter’s year-on-year revenue is still declining, the aforementioned $590 million figure is sequentially larger than $574 million posted in Q2 2017.
Even though the earnings report as a whole didn’t bring any major surprises in terms of market performance, it did contain an unconventional correction on Twitter’s part as the San Francisco, California-based firm said it wrongly counted its user numbers for the last three years and reported four million new users in Q3 but only brought its total count up by two million to account for the mistake. The correction only affected the monthly active user count which Twitter claims now sits at 330 million, explaining that it previously mistakenly counted between one to two million of people as its own MAUs despite the fact that they were accessing the platform through unspecified third-party apps.
Twitter stock went up after the market opened on Thursday following the publication of the company’s consolidated financial report and is currently trading at $20.12 per share, more than 17 percent up year-on-year. Investors are presumably optimistic about the fact that the company is finally close to profitability more than four years after holding its initial public offering, while some existing stakeholders may see this as an opportunity to cash out on their shares of the social media platform which is presently in the middle of a major overhaul aimed at combating online harassment. Twitter has also been questioned by Washington in recent times, with federal authorities still probing the potential Russian interference with the 2016 presidential elections and the role its platform played in the ordeal, i.e. whether it did enough to stop it.