Twitter Soars After Surprise Q4 Earnings Beat

Shares of Twitter Inc TWTR soared by more than 20 percent Thursday morning after the social media company reported its first ever quarterly profit in history.

What You Need To Know

Twitter said it earned 19 cents per share in the fourth quarter on revenue of $732 million, which came in ahead of the Street's expectations of 14 cents per share on revenue of $686 million. The company said its total monthly active users (MAU) base was unchanged from the prior quarter at 330 million and up 4 percent from a year ago. Average daily active users (DAU) rose 12 percent year-over-year.

Why It's Important

Twitter's stock -- up 10 percent this year -- has been outperforming Facebook's FB since the start of 2018. While it wouldn't be fair to compare Twitter's top-and-bottom-line fourth quarter print to that of Facebook's, looking at metric growth would be a good exercise for investors.

Facebook said in its fourth quarter report late January its DAU and MAU metrics both rose 14 percent from a year ago. As such, Facebook's user base is growing at a faster rate compared to Twitter.

"Q4 was a strong finish to the year," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in the press release. "I'm proud of the steady progress we made in 2017, and confident in our path ahead."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments were less optimistic: "2017 was a strong year for Facebook, but it was also a hard one."

What's Next?

Wall Street analysts will be taking a deep-dive into Twitter's earnings report and it will soon be seen if some of the bear or neutral analysts are ready to shift to a bullish stance.

At time of publication, shares were up about 20 percent to $32.37 in pre-market trading. The stock hasn't seen the $30 level since November 2015.

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