Shares of Twitter Inc. rallied Tuesday after the social media company reported better-than-expected first-quarter sales projections and strong user growth.
San Francisco-based Twitter reported $787 million in revenue, an 18% increase from the year-earlier period. Analysts, on average, estimated $775 million. The microblogging site also posted an increase in monetizable daily active users to 134 million, beating analyst predictions for about 128.4 million. That compares with 126 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Twitter shifted focus to daily users for the first time in the December quarter, arguing that it’s a more meaningful metric than monthly visitors because the company aims to drive people to the service every day.
Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey has escalated efforts to rid the site of toxic content amid heightened concerns that social media companies have failed to curb the exploitation of personal data, election meddling and hateful posts. The company recently said some 38% of abusive content is now being found through technology and flagged for human review.
Shares of Twitter rose as much as 12% on Tuesday, the most since October, to US$38.35 in New York trading. Twitter’s stock is up 20% so far this year, outperforming the broader market but lagging behind social media peers. Facebook has climbed more than 38% so far in 2019, while Snap Inc. has more than doubled.
Twitter also said Tuesday that it expects second-quarter revenue to be $770 million to $830 million -- a wide forecast range with a midpoint of $800 million, lower than analysts’ average sales estimate of US$819.2 million.
