Twitter may be President Trump’s favorite way of communicating, but the mini-blog service is having trouble making money. It reported slower revenue growth than at any time since going public, Wednesday. Its shares dropped 10 percent in pre-market trading.
Twitter (TWTR.N) reported revenue of $717.2 mllion, off analyst’s consensus estimates of $740.1 million. Its loss increased to $167.1 million or 23 cents a share in Q4, up from $90.24 million in the same period the previous year.
It increased its user base to 319 million, a 4 percent increase, about what analysts expected (319.6 million).
Restructuring charges of $101.2 million, way up from $12.9 million in the same period a year ago.
Items excluded, the company reported earnings of 16 cents a share in Q4, topping analyst estimates of 12 cents a share.
Competition from Snapchat and Instagram have both cut into Twitter’s growth despite its adding new features such as video.
The company has had a rough year despite the increase in its user base and the attention brought to it by President Trump’s near daily tweets.
The San Francisco firm saw a handful of top executives leave during the year. While talk of acquisition by Disney or Salesforce created some media buzz for a time, neither came to pass.
In fact, talk of acquisitions by a major media firm such as Disney revealed some of Twitter’s weaknesses as an acquisition candidate: its under-policed dark side, fake accounts, and difficulty in monetizing the service.
