What happened
Shares of Twitter (TWTR) fell as much as 14.1% on Thursday, following the company's second-quarter financial results. The stock is down about 13.1% at 11:20 a.m. EDT.
So what
For its second quarter, Twitter's revenue and adjusted earnings per share were $574 million and $0.12, respectively. Both metrics easily exceeded analysts' consensus estimate for revenue of $537 million and adjusted EPS of $0.05.
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Notably, however, Twitter's revenue and earnings trends highlight a struggling business. Revenue was down 5% year over year, and the company's GAAP loss widened 9% year over year to $116 million, driven by a $55 million charge related to its previous investment in SoundCloud.
But the worst news from the second-quarter earnings release was arguably the platform's user metrics. While Twitter's 328 million monthly active users were up 5% year over year, the key metric was flat sequentially. This suggests that the President Trump-fueled growth in recent quarters has turned out to be a one-time benefit, making Twitter's return to meaningful user growth both short-lived and unpredictable from here.
Now what
Twitter continues to expect revenue growth headwinds. Management said in its second-quarter shareholder letter that it does not expect to see its total revenue growth rate improve in the second half of the year. The cited reason for the bearish outlook was the company's ongoing de-emphasis of revenue products as it attempts to increase its focus on its best-performing revenue products and introduce new ones. Specifically, management said it expects $75 million of headwinds associated with the de-emphasis of underperforming revenue products.
