Controversy surrounded Twitter's earnings report on Tuesday as the company's first quarter results leaked online more than 30 minutes before the close of market. The results showed Twitter missed the mark on revenue which sent share values plummeting and prompted the company to halt trading. By the time trading ended for the day, shares were down more than 18 percent.
Financial intelligence platform Selerity was the first to publish the results which they claim to have found on Twitter's own investor relations website. Nasdaq, who hosts Twitter's IR website, told Bloomberg that the company's earnings had been inadvertently released by the exchange's website.
Regardless, Twitter for the first time surpassed the 300 million monthly active user mark with 302 million monthly active users. That's up 18 percent year-over-year and is a healthy increase from the 288 million it had in the previous quarter but what sent stocks south was the revenue miss.
Twitter posted revenue of $436 million for the quarter, far less than the $456.2 million Wall Street was anticipating. The company pointed to its acquisition of marketing technology company TellApart for part of the reason why revenue was down. CEO Dick Costolo added that lower-than-expected contribution from some of their newer direct response products also contributed to lower revenue.
All said and done, Twitter posted a loss of $162 million versus the $132 million loss during the same time period a year ago. Looking ahead, Twitter lowered its guidance for next quarter to between $470 and $485 million.
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