Twitter (TWTR) shocked everyone by posting its second consecutive profitable quarter last quarter. This also happened to be the second profitable quarter in the company's history, and investors are eager to see if it can pull off the feat again when the company reports third quarter results this week.
If you want to get an overview of Twitter's performance this past period, here are the top three things to watch for in its earnings report on July 27.
Twitter has struggled to find its purpose in the social media and news world. Image source: Twitter.
1. Revenue growth
Top of mind for investors: can Twitter's growth story continue? The company recently returned to revenue growth, reporting an increase of 2% year-over-year in the fourth quarter to $732 million. Twitter managed to report a second consecutive quarter of revenue growth last quarter at 21% year-over-year growth to $665 million. This also handily beat out analyst estimates of $608 million.
Twitter is now under pressure to show revenue growth for a third quarter in a row. For the second quarter, the consensus analyst estimate calls for 21% year-over-year growth from the $574 million reported in the same period last year.
The bulk of Twitter's revenue comes from advertising so investors will be interested to hear if advertisers are flocking or fleeing from the company that has struggled in the past but is starting to turn a profit. Twitter has warned investors in the past that it's been facing increasing competition in the digital ad space. However, its video initiative has provided a nice boost. Last quarter, Twitter said that over half of its ad revenue came from video for the second quarter in a row.
TWTR Revenue (Quarterly) data by YCharts
2. Daily user growth
Twitter doesn't report how many daily active users it has, but it does report growth rates for the metric. This is a way for the company to prove to investors that engagement is growing even if its monthly active users are largely stagnant.
Last quarter, Twitter reported daily active users increased 10% year over year. This was down from the 12% growth in the fourth quarter and the 14% growth in the third quarter. But generally, daily active users are on the up and up for Twitter. Last quarter was the fifth straight period it reported more than 10% daily active user growth.
3. Monthly active users
Twitter's monthly active user (MAU) counts have been a sore spot for the company in the past three years, but its latest quarter showed some positive momentum.
Last quarter, Twitter reported that it added 6 million new monthly users. Only 1 million of these new users were in the U.S., showing that most of its recent growth has been overseas. In total, Twitter reported 336 million MAUs for the period, up from 330 million in the fourth quarter.
Since 2015, Twitter's monthly user growth has been discouraging with the platform even losing users in some periods. In fact, for the fourth quarter, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly active users, which was the same as the previous quarter.
Investors will be particularly focused on the platform's user counts, as Twitter removed over 70 million fake or suspicious accounts in May and June. It's unclear what impact that maintenance will have on engagement and user metrics.
In the best case scenario, Twitter will be able to report another positive quarter for MAUs and revenue, as well as another quarter of 10% or greater growth for DAUs. Twitter itself seems confident that it can pull it off as it's been open about its expectations to report a profitable year for 2018.
