Twitter post solid Q1 results but outlook sinks stock

Like its bigger tech peers, Twitter posted stronger-than-expected results for the first quarter on Thursday. But its lukewarm outlook sent shares tumbling after hours.

The San Francisco-based company earned $68 million, or 8 cents per share, in the January-March period. That’s up from a loss of $8.4 million, or 1 cent per share, a year earlier.

Revenue grew 28% to $1.04 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting a loss of 2 cents per share on revenue of $1.03 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

Twitter permanently suspended its arguably most powerful and polarizing user — former President Donald Trump — from its platform in January after the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol.

“When it comes to the Twitter Rules, we recognize that politicians and government officials are constantly evolving how they use the service, and we want our policies to remain relevant to the everchanging nature of political discourse on Twitter,” the company said in a statement. To this end, the company is seeking public input on its rules.

Twitter had 199 million daily users, on average, in the third quarter, up 20% year-over-year and slightly below the 200 million that analysts were expecting.

By comparison, Facebook had 1.88 billion daily users on average in March 2021, an increase of 8% year-over-year. Snapchat, meanwhile, had 280 million average daily active users in the first quarter.

Twitter does not disclose monthly user figures.

Twitter said it expects revenue between $980 million and $1.08 billion for the second quarter. The midpoint of that is below analysts’ expectations of $1.06 billion.

Twitter’s stock fell $5.81, or 8.9%, to $59.28 in after-hours trading.

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This story has been corrected to use a comparable FactSet estimate of a two cent per share loss, according to generally accepted accounting principles.