Twitter Reports Its First $1 billion Revenue Quarter, User-growth
Twitter cracked $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time this holiday season, though the social-media company’s profit came up short.
The company reported net income of $119 million, or 15 cents a share, down from $255 million, or 33 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. Adjusted earnings per share came in at 25 cents, compared with 31 cents a year prior.
Twitter’s revenue for the quarter totaled $1.01 billion. A year prior, Twitter reported $909 million in revenue. Twitter's advertising revenue totaled $885 million, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
The social media company said it added 7 million monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) users on a sequential basis during the period, bringing its total count up to 152 million.
"2019 was a great year for Twitter. Our work to increase relevance and ease of use delivered 21% mDAU growth in Q4, with more than half of the 26 million mDAU added in 2019 directly driven by product improvements," said Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO. "Entering 2020, we are building on our momentum -- learning faster, prioritizing better, shipping more and hiring remarkable talent. All of which put us in a stronger position as we address the challenges and opportunities ahead."
"We reached a new milestone in Q4 with quarterly revenue in excess of $1 billion, reflecting steady progress on revenue product and solid performance across most major geographies, with particular strength in US advertising," said Ned Segal, Twitter's CFO. "We continue to see tremendous opportunity to get the whole world to use Twitter and provide a more personalized experience across both organic and promoted content, delivering increasing value for both consumers and advertisers."
Advertising-driven companies such as Facebook, Alphabet and Snap saw disappointing ad spending in the fourth quarter, which was partly attributed to a shorter window for holiday shopping last year compared with the year before.
For the first quarter, Twitter expects $825 million to $885 million in revenue.
Twitter expects to grow headcount by 20% or more in 2020, especially in engineering, product, design, and research. Given investment decisions made in previous years and anticipated 2020 headcount growth, the company expects total costs and expenses (which include cost of revenue and all operating expenses) to grow approximately 20% in 2020, ramping in absolute dollars over the course of the year.
Twitter's investments also include building out a new data center in 2020 to add capacity to support audience and revenue growth. While the timing of these investments will be variable and spread out over multiple quarters, the company expects capital expenditures to be weighted toward the second half of the year.
For Q1, Twitter expects:
- Total revenue to be between $825 million and $885 million
- Operating income to be between $0 million and $30 million
For FY 2020, the company expects:
- Stock-based compensation expense to be between $425 million and $475 million
- Capital expenditures to be between $775 million and $825 million