10 February 2017•Update: 10 February 2017
By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Shares of Twitter plunged double digits Thursday after the company released a disappointing earnings report that showed revenue growth at the slowest level since it went public in 2013.
The report for the fiscal fourth quarter that ended Dec. 31, revealed the company is struggling to attract advertisers. Advertisement revenue dropped to $638 million, a 0.5 percent decrease from the same period of 2015.
“2016 was a transformative year as we reset and focused on why people use Twitter: it’s the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone’s talking about,” CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey said in a statement. “We overcame the toughest challenge for any consumer service at scale by reversing declining audience trends and re-accelerating usage.”
Twitter now has 319 million monthly active users, up from 317 million last quarter but slightly below analyst expectations of 319.6 million.
There is growing concern Twitter is falling even further behind rivals Facebook and Snapchat in appealing to advertisers and the public at large.
Facebook has 1.86 billion users across the globe and five-year-old Snapchat has around 301 million, according to numbers released by the companies.
“While revenue growth continues to lag audience growth, we are applying the same focused approach that drove audience growth to our revenue product portfolio, focusing on our strengths and the real-time nature of our service,” Dorsey said. “This will take time, but we're moving fast to show results.”
It appears not even high-profile Twitter user, President Donald Trump, can attract droves of users to the service.
Some analysts wondered if there would be a “Trump Bump” as new accounts were opened after he won the presidential election in November, but the earnings report does not support that narrative.
Twitter stock plummeted closed 12 percent lower to $16.41 per share.
