Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) reported fiscal 2014 second-quarter earnings of 2 cents a share, excluding items, on revenue of $312 million, compared to a loss of 12 cents a share, excluding items, a year earlier. Shares of Twitter soared over 30 percent on Tuesday to $51.06 in after-hours trading. Wall Street had expected the social networking giant to report a loss of 1 cent per share on $283 million in revenue, according to analysts polled by Reuters. Analysts were looking at two key measures: monthly active users and mobile advertising growth. The company said the average of monthly active users grew to 271 million year-over-year, as of June 30, 2014. Meanwhile, advertising revenue increased to a total of $277 million year-over-year. Mobile ads were 81 percent of total advertising revenue. Ahead of Twitter's earnings report, Keith Bliss, senior vice president and director of sales and marketing at Cuttone & Co., Inc. spoke to International Business Times on Thursday, July 24 about what factors Wall Street is analyzing in Twitter’s earnings report and the company's conference call with shareholders. “It’s all going to be digital mobile ad revenue that’s coming out. That’s what we really want to hear from Twitter,” Keith Bliss told IBTimes. The company broke even in the first-quarter ended March 31, 2014 and reported EPS of zero on revenue of $250.49 million, compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 3 cents on revenue of $241 million. The San Francisco-based company said revenue rose 119 percent to $250 million during the first-quarter, compared to $114 million in the same period last year, while advertising revenue totaled $226 million last quarter. Mobile ad revenue comprised nearly 80 percent of total ad revenue. “With Twitter, they may not have revenue and they may not have positive earnings for the quarter, but I’m not sure that’s important right now,” Bliss said. “People are buying the stock based upon what the future is. Right now, since it’s pulled back 59 percent from the highs, depending upon what they say in their earnings announcement about ad revenue, it might be a good time to go ahead and take a shot prior to that earnings call and get into this stock.” Despite beating analysts’ expectations during the first-quarter, shares of Twitter dropped more than 10 percent in after-hours trading following its last earnings announcement in April as analysts were looking for a larger boost in monthly active users. Twitter reported an average of 255 million monthly active users during the first-quarter ended March 31, a 25 percent year-over-year increase as mobile monthly active users hit 198 million during the period, an increase of 31 percent from a year earlier. However, the increase to 255 million active users for the last quarter was just 14 million higher compared to three months earlier when Twitter reported 241 million active users in the fourth-quarter of 2013. Meanwhile, rival Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) reported fiscal 2014 second-quarter results last week and said its monthly active users rose to 1.32 billion as of June 30, up 14 percent year-over-year. The social network saw a 31 percent increase in mobile active users to 1.07 billion compared to the same period in 2013. “I think people have gotten over the notion that they [Twitter] need to have user growth and message growth,” Bliss said. “You saw that happen during the World Cup when they were setting records in some of those games. It’s clear that the platform has taken on a new life, not only here in the U.S., but globally for a variety of things.” Twitter is hosting a conference call with shareholders Tuesday, July 29 at 5 p.m. EDT to discuss the company’s second-quarter financial results.

• published: 29 Jul 2014
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