Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) reported first-quarter 2020 earnings Thursday that beat estimates despite an expected hit to its ads business due to the coronavirus pandemic. The stock fell more than 6% during the earnings call as executives offered few signs of recovery in its advertising business.
Earnings per share (EPS) registered 11 cents. Revenue proved to be $808 million. Monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) were 166 million.
Experts on Wall Street had been anticipating earnings per share of 10 cents on revenue of $776 million. mDAUs were expected to come in at 164 million, based on StreetAccount estimates. However, it’s difficult to compare reported earnings to analyst estimates for Twitter’s first quarter, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to hit global economies and makes earnings impact difficult to assess.
After an initial spike, the stock turned negative as executives failed to reassure analysts on the earnings call that it had seen signs of recovery. CFO Ned Segal said on a call with analysts pointed to weakened advertising spending at the end of March as a signal of what Twitter has been experiencing. By contrast, Google and Facebook said in their earnings reports this week that they have seen signs of recovery in the first few weeks of April.
Twitter did not provide guidance for the second quarter and is still suspending full year guidance, but it noted that its plans to build a new data center will likely be delayed, impacting capex spend in the 2020 fiscal year.
TWTR stock dipped $1.49, or 4.8%, to $29.60.
Tech Insider
