Twitter just released its financials for the fourth quarter, meeting Wall Street expectations on revenue and beating on earnings per share ($710 million and 16 cents respectively).
However, the company failed to make an impact on its biggest area of concern, which is user growth. Twitter reported 320 million monthly active users, which is the same as what it reported for Q3.
Twitter said in a letter to shareholders, “2015 was another very strong year for Twitter. Total revenue reached $2.2 billion, up 58% year over year with more than $550 million in adjusted EBITDA. We made significant progress in scaling the total number of active advertisers to 130,000 in Q4, up almost 90% year over year. It’s remarkable we built this business in just five years from zero revenue. We saw a decline in monthly active usage in Q4, but we’ve already seen January monthly actives bounce back to Q3 levels. We’re confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time.”
Ad revenue for the fourth quarter was$641 million,(up 48% year-over-year). Mobile ad revenue was 86% of total ad revenue.
“Total average monthly active users (MAUs) were 320 million for Q4, up 9% year-over-year, compared to 320 million in the previous quarter,” the company reported. “Excluding SMS Fast Followers, MAUs were 305 million for Q4, up 6% year-over-year, compared to 307 million in the previous quarter. Mobile MAUs represented approximately 80% of total MAUs. Total audience, which consists of MAUs and monthly logged-out visitors, totaled more than 800 million in Q4.”
That user growth problem appears to be what Wall Street remains fixated on as stock quickly sank following the earnings release.