Twitter (TWTR)

[winston]

not vested

Twitter (TWTR)

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) is stuck in a prolonged trading range of between around $26 and $34. Every time the stock drops to the $26 range, it rallies. Likewise, when TWTR stock is $34 – $35, traders lock in profits. At a $25 billion market cap, TWTR stock is 19 times smaller than that of Facebook’s $481 market cap.

At that market price, investors get a micro-blogging services firm that is becoming more appealing to advertisers. Cleveland Research wrote that encouraging feedback from advertisers would justify an increase in revenue estimates for Twitter.

At a presentation at the Morgan Stanley conference, Twitter said it was cleaning up its user base. DAU and MAU numbers no longer matter so much when those activities just measure bots and spammers. Instead, Twitter will baseline its measures against revenue generation per user. For the investor, that is a welcome change in metrics.

Advertisers are more than happy at the changes by TWTR. They will become the primary destination site for starting online conversations on products.

The audience, mostly on a mobile device, will see and interact with the chatter, strengthening the advertising push.

Source: Investor Place

[winston]

not vested

Twitter (TWTR)

Growth Stocks to Buy That Are Growing Into Their Valuation: Twitter (TWTR)

Forward P/E Multiple 5 Years Ago: 180
Current Forward P/E Multiple: 38

Stock Price % Gain Past 5 Years: 23%
Most Recent Quarter Revenue Growth Rate: 18%

Following in Facebook’s footsteps over the past several years on the “growing into your valuation” front has been Twitter (NYSE:TWTR).

Twitter was once one of the most richly valued stocks on the market. Five years ago, the forward earnings multiple was up near 200. But, over the past few years, Twitter has regained momentum in its digital ad business (which is growing at a high teens rate right now) and substantially improved its profitability profile. This combo has driven healthy and big profit growth for Twitter.

The impact on the stock price? Twitter stock today trades near multi-year high levels, but the valuation is actually well off multi-year high levels. Thus, today’s price tag on Twitter stock looks much more reasonable and fundamentally supported than it was at previous highs.

Going forward, Twitter should continue to leverage secular digital ad tailwinds to produce healthy revenue growth, which on top of gradual margin expansion, should lead to healthy profit growth.

Healthy profit growth for a stock trading around 40-times forward earnings should allow Twitter stock to continue to grow into its valuation.

Source: Investor Place

[winston]

not vested

Twitter earnings drop to US$37m

Twitter is reporting surprisingly strong user numbers and revenue even as it eliminates robotic and fake accounts on its platform.

On that front, the company said instances of suspicious behavior and spam dropped by 18 percent during the second quarter when it posted financial results for the second quarter Friday.

But Twitter’s push to cut down on fake accounts costs money, and its adjusted profit fell by 36 percent to about US$37 million, or 5 US cents per share.

At the same time, revenue surged by 18 percent, to US$841 million, far better than the US$829 million that Wall Street was looking for, according to a survey by FactSet.

Twitter’s daily user base grew by14 percent to 139 million. Analysts were expecting 134.7 million daily users.

Source: AP

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking- ... 0726&sid=2

[winston]

not vested

Twitter revenue hit by weaker advertising, low demand; shares plunge

By Elizabeth Culliford

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc (N:TWTR) posted worse-than-expected third quarter revenue and profit on Thursday, which the company attributed to advertising problems including product bugs and unusually low demand over the summer, sending its shares down about 15%.

Shares of the micro-blogging platform dropped to $33 in trading before the bell.

Twitter's revenue rose 9% from a year earlier to $824 million, missing Wall Street expectations of $874 million, based on IBES data from Refinitiv.

Total advertising revenue was $702 million, an increase of 8% year-over-year.

Third-quarter net income was $37 million, or $0.05 per share. In the same period last year, the firm reported net income of $789 million, or $106 million when adjusted to exclude certain items.

Analysts had expected net income of $161.5 million.

Twitter had forecast that third quarter revenue growth would lag the first two quarters, partly due to ending some older ad formats. But it also encountered unexpected problems, such as bugs which impacted its ability to target ads and share data with ad partners, and fewer big events compared with the previous summer.

For the fourth quarter, Twitter expects total revenue to be between $940 million and $1.01 billion. Wall Street on average expects $1.06 billion.

However, the social media platform did record a rise in daily users who see ads on the site, beating analyst estimates.

Twitter has stopped disclosing its monthly active users count, instead reporting mDAU, a metric it created to measure users exposed on a daily basis to advertising through the site or Twitter applications that are able to show ads.

Twitter's Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said the growth in monetizable daily active usage (mDAU) was driven by product improvements, including making the site easier to navigate and more proactively identifying abusive content for removal.

The company's average mDAU hit 145 million, beating analyst expectations of 141 million, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. This alternative metric was up 17% year-over-year.

In July, Twitter launched a more personalized desktop Twitter.com as part of its efforts to make the platform better for conversations. It has also experimented with the ability to follow topics, and has recently expanded testing for a feature to hide replies.

Recently, the company made 6-second video bidding available for global advertisers and it has continued to expand its live and on-demand video partnerships, including deals with NBC Olympics and Eurosport for coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Twitter and other social media platforms have also recently come under scrutiny over their ad policies.

Twitter, Facebook Inc (O:FB) and Alphabet Inc's (O:GOOGL) Google were this month criticized by U.S. democratic presidential candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, for allowing politicians to run ads containing false or misleading claims.

In August, Twitter announced it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media outlets, shortly after it came under fire for showing ads from Chinese state-controlled media that criticized the Hong Kong protesters.

Twitter also faced heat over its handling of user data when it said in October that email addresses and phone numbers uploaded by users to meet its security requirements may have been 'inadvertently' used for advertising purposes.

Total operating expenses, including cost of revenue, rose by 17% year-over-year to $780 million, partly due to plans to hire more employees.

The company expects fourth-quarter operating income to be between $130 million and $170 million.

Source: Reuters

https://www.investing.com/news/technolo ... rs-2003129

[winston]

not vested

Twitter's stock plunges after Q3 earnings, users miss

by Emily McCormick

Twitter’s (TWTR) shares plummeted on Thursday after it posted third-quarter results that missed expectations on nearly every key metric, as advertising growth decelerated sharply over last year and site activity slowed down during the summer.

Here were the main numbers from the report, compared to consensus expectations compiled by Bloomberg:

Revenue: $823.7 million vs. $875.6 million expected and $758.11 million YOY

Adjusted earnings: 17 cents vs. 20 cents expected and 21 cents YOY

Monetizable daily active users: 145 million vs. 145.5 million expected

Fourth-quarter sales guidance also came in light. The micro-blogging platform said it expects to see revenue of between $940 million and $1.01 billion in the final three months of the year, missing the Street’s expectation for $1.06 billion.

The results dragged down Twitter’s stock, which slumped more than 18% to $31.73 in early premarket dealings.

Twitter’s stock was up 35% for the year-to-date through Wednesday’s close.

Advertising revenue in the U.S. – which comprises the bulk of Twitter’s sales — increased just 11% in the third quarter over last year, slowing from 32% growth from the year-ago period.

Monetizable daily active users — a closely followed measure of the site ability to generate money via user engagement — surged 17% year over year, but still fell short of Wall Street’s consensus forecast.

In a letter to shareholders, Twitter blamed its estimates-missing third-quarter revenue on “a number of headwinds including revenue product issues and greater-than-expected advertising seasonality in July and August.” This in turn trickled down to weaker-than-expected bottom-line results, which Twitter said reflect “no significant changes” to its ongoing investments.

“In Q3 we discovered, and took steps to remediate, bugs that primarily affected our legacy Mobile Application Promotion (MAP) product, impacting our ability to target ads and share data with measurement and ad partners,” the company said. “We also discovered that certain personalization and data settings were not operating as expected.”

“We believe that, in aggregate, these issues reduced year-over-year revenue growth by 3 or more points in Q3.”

Over the past year, Twitter has doubled down on efforts to remove spammy and bad actor accounts from the platform, investing in these health efforts in hopes of improving user and advertiser experiences over the long-term.

Along those lines, Twitter said it proactively removed 50% of Tweets for abusive content in the third quarter, without needing to be flagged by another user. This was up 12 percentage points from the first quarter this year.

Last quarter, Twitter said it expected to see operating expenses increase 20% over last year during fiscal 2019, with health initiatives and ad product revamps comprising a large portion of these investments.

In the third quarter, Twitter said it grew its headcount 21% in part to help with these efforts.

Prior to results, investors had largely been on board with this thesis despite the costs it’s created for the company.

“Health of the TWTR platform remains the company’s top priority, and we believe health work is creating a stronger user base from which TWTR can grow,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in a note ahead of Thursday’s report.

Twitter’s third-quarter results come on the heels of an estimates-topping report from peer social media giant Snap (SNAP). The strong sales, earnings and user growth from Snapchat’s parent company underscored a robust internet advertising market, teeing investors up to anticipate similarly strong results from Twitter.

Shares of Snap and Facebook (FB) declined after Twitter posted its results Thursday morning.

Source: Yahoo Finance

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter- ... 59435.html

[winston]

vested

Twitter (TWTR) Plunges 20%, Is It Now A Buy?

The company says a second, improved version of MAP is in the works, but it doesn’t know when it’ll be ready yet.

For example, Twitter gives advertisers the opportunity to target based on the devices they’re using to access the platform. They can reach audiences based on a version of their operating system, a specific device, WiFi connectivity, mobile carrier and whether a device is new, which indicates they might be more on the hunt for new apps or services.

“Although we are working on remediation, there isn’t remediation yet in place, so the effects of that will continue into Q4”.

Twitter runs auctions for ads, where advertisers bid against one another to have their ads shown to an audience they want to target. The auction considers both what an advertisers is willing to pay and what Twitter sees as the “quality” of an ad. When an advertisers wins an auction, the ad will be served once to a user on Twitter.

The company said cost per ad engagement was down 12%, which it said indicated a shift in media mix from MAP to video ad formats, which have a lower cost per engagement.

“Historically, users with high follower counts have seen fewer ads,” the statement said. “Recently, we’ve shifted our approach to showing ads to everyone who uses Twitter and as a result, some will notice an increase in the number of ads they’re seeing.”

Source: Tech Stock Sensei

https://techstocksensei.com/2019/10/twi ... now-a-buy/

[winston]

vested

Why Twitter's Revenue Growth Won't Bounce Back in 2020

Twitter faces both a near- and long-term revenue growth challenge.

by Adam Levy

It's going to be hard for Twitter to grow revenue when the competition is producing more innovative and lucrative ad products for marketers and new consumer products to keep their audiences engaged.

Source: Motley Fool

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/12/ ... in-20.aspx

[investar]

do you use Twitter, the site?

TWTR, the share:
it looks like a buy to me, here at 32.5$
I am looking for exposure to the sector

but maybe it is better to wait for the 6/2/20 results.
I don't know enough from it.

Are you vested for the LT or for a comeback to the 40$ level?

[winston]

1. do you use Twitter, the site?

2. but maybe it is better to wait for the 6/2/20 results.

3. Are you vested for the LT or for a comeback to the 40$ level?

Winston's reply:-

1. Yes, I have been using the site to keep on top of what Trump is saying. I also use it to catch up on the latest news from the various sources.

2. Yes, I'm concerned about next quarter's results. Everyone is expecting it to be not so good. Not sure whether I want to sell and buy back later or go through it. Last quarterly results produced a huge drop in the price.

3. Longer term, it should be ok. Not sure whether there's any short term trading opportunity. If there's a spike up to US$40, I may sell first.

[winston]

vested

Twitter Bug Exposed Millions of User Phone Numbers

Dec 26, 2019

by John Biggs

A security researcher was able to use a bug in the Twitter Android app, to identify millions of Twitter users, connecting their phone numbers to their Twitter IDs.

The exploit could expose failures in the company's two-factor authentication system and give other security developers pause.

According to a TechCrunch report, the researcher, Ibrahim Balic, created randomized lists of phone numbers and sent them to Twitter.

“If you upload your phone number, it fetches user data in return,” he said.

The user data allowed Balic to find phone numbers for many major Twitter "celebrities" including the private number of a "senior Israeli politician."

“Upon learning of this bug, we suspended the accounts used to inappropriately access people’s personal information. Protecting the privacy and safety of the people who use Twitter is our number one priority and we remain focused on rapidly stopping spam and abuse originating from use of Twitter’s APIs,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

The bug exposed user accounts when Balic uploaded millions of phone numbers and asked Twitter to match them with users. Typically this interface is used only when new users install the app on their phone but, using a set of API calls, Balic was able to spoof this behavior.

The resulting breach of privacy - essentially connecting real numbers to real Twitter handles - could reduce the efficacy of two-factor authentication schemes popular on financial applications and wallets.

Source: Coin Desk

https://www.coindesk.com/twitter-bug-ex ... ne-numbers