- Annual Revenue Growth of 37% to $5.08 Billion and Average Monetizable Daily Active Usage (mDAU) Growth of 13% to 217 Million in Q4
- Company Announces New $4 Billion Share Repurchase Program Authorized, Including $2 Billion Accelerated Share Repurchase
Twitter hits six million new daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2021, a bit lighter than analyst forecasts, and beat Wall Street estimates on the bottom line. Revenue was in line with expectations, as the social network reported only “modest” impact from Apple’s iOS privacy changes.
Twitter shares were up more than 4% in premarket trading, as
the company also reaffirmed aggressive user and revenue growth targets for 2023
and announced a $4 billion stock buyback program.
Q4 revenue was $1.57 billion, up 22% year over year, driven
by “ongoing revenue product improvements, solid sales execution, and a broad,
continued increase in advertiser demand,” the company said. The revenue impact
associated with Apple’s iOS changes to require user opt-in for ad tracking in
Q4 “remained modest,” Twitter said, and is expected to have “an ongoing modest
impact,” which is incorporated into Q1 guidance.
Twitter’s indication that Apple’s privacy changes are
causing minimal disruption stands in contrast to the warning from Meta
(Facebook’s parent company), which said it anticipates a bigger impact on Q1
revenue growth from the iOS changes. That contributed to a historic drop in
Meta’s market capitalization.
Twitter posted net income of $182 million in Q4, down 18%,
as operating costs jumped 35% with an increase in hiring. That represented a
net margin of 12% and diluted earnings per share of 21 cents. Wall Street
analysts on average expected revenue of $1.58 billion and EPS of 16 cents.
For the last three months of 2021, Twitter’s average
monetizable daily active users (mDAU) worldwide reached 217 million, up 6
million sequentially and an increase of 13% year over year. Daily active users
in the U.S. inched up about 1 million, to 38 million mDAU in the year-end
quarter.
In announcing Q4 results, Twitter reaffirmed its long-term
2023 goals, which include hitting at least 315M mDAU in Q4 2023 and $7.5
billion in full-year revenue for ’23.
In addition, the company announced that Twitter’s board of
directors approved a new $4 billion share buyback program. “We intend to enter
into a $2 billion accelerated share repurchase (ASR) and repurchase the remaining
$2 billion over time,” Twitter said.
The Q4 earnings report is the first under new CEO Parag
Agrawal, Twitter’s former CTO who took the reins after Jack Dorsey, who
co-founded Twitter in 2006, announced his resignation from the social media
company in November.
“Our strong 2021 performance positions us to improve
execution and deliver on our 2023 goals,” Agrawal said in announcing the
results. “We are more focused and better organized to deliver improved
personalization and selection for our audience, partners and advertisers.”
For full-year 2022, Twitter expects revenue to grow in the
“low-to-mid 20% range” (excluding MoPub, the in-app advertising division it
sold for $1 billion in a deal that closed last month), with performance-based
ad revenue growing faster than brand advertising.
Twitter’s guidance for Q1 2022 is for total revenue to be
between $1.17 billion and $1.27 billion and GAAP operating loss to be $225
million-$175 million.
“The impact of [Apple’s App Tracking Transparency] is likely
to vary across ad platforms given the unique mix of ad formats, signal, and
remediations on each, as well as other factors,” Twitter said in its
shareholder letter. “Although retooling our revenue products in light of
Apple’s privacy-related iOS changes took additional time, energy, and resources
in 2020 and 2021, we believe that our product improvements have helped reduce
the impact on Twitter.”
In 2021, Twitter expanded its workforce by about 2,000
employees, up 35%, to end the year with more than 7,500 employees concentrated
in engineering, product, design and research.
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