Twitter (TWTR) will join a host of other popular technology companies in reporting earnings this month. The company just scheduled its second-quarter earnings release for July 26.
The social network's better-than-expected revenue and non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings per share in its first quarter impressed the Street, sending shares 18% higher during the trading day following the report.
Did Twitter maintain this strong momentum in Q2? Ahead of the company's quarterly update, here's an early preview of some areas worth checking on.
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Revenue growth
Twitter's first-quarter revenue rose 18% year over year -- a particularly impressive growth rate, given that it's on top of 21% growth in the year-ago quarter. Sales during the quarter were helped by strength in the U.S., and strong performance in the company's video ad products.
For Twitter's second quarter, management guided for revenue between $770 million and $830 million. Based on the midpoint of this range, this translates to 13% year-over-year growth. Given how conservative management's revenue guidance has been in recent quarters, investors should look for actual revenue to come in slightly above this guidance range.
For some more context, the consensus analyst estimate currently calls for second-quarter revenue of $830 million.
Daily active users
If you look for Twitter's second-quarter update on monthly active users in the results later this month, you won't find it. Management said it would no longer provide the metric for investors after its first-quarter earnings release. Instead, Twitter is now providing the absolute number of monetizable daily active users (mDAU) on its platform each quarter.
"We want to provide something valuable to people on Twitter every day, and we believe that monetizable DAU (mDAU), and its related growth, are the best ways to measure our success," the company said in its fourth-quarter update in February.
In Twitter's first quarter of 2019, mDAU increased 11% year over year to 134 million. This was an acceleration from 9% growth in the prior quarter.
For the company's second quarter, look for mDAU to grow at a rate similar to the 9% to 11% growth seen in the last two quarters.
Operating income
One area Twitter really shone in the first-quarter update was its operating income. Total operating income for the period was $94 million, crushing management's guidance for operating income to be between $5 million and $35 million.
This outperformance "was due to better-than-expected revenue and lower-than-expected costs, reflecting one-time items, the delayed timing of certain expenditures, and scenario planning that incorporated too many conservative outcomes," Twitter said in its first-quarter shareholder letter.
Management guided for operating income in Q2 to be between $35 million and $70 million. But given management's conservative methods for guidance, actual operating income may have exceeded this range.
Twitter will report its second-quarter results before market open on July 26.
