Twitter Passes First Quarter Estimates But Shares Fall

Twitter reported a bottom- and top-line that beat estimates on Tuesday and attributed its increase of 119% in revenue to its growth in users as well as engagement.

However, shares of the microblogging company plummeted in after hours trading because of worried investors unhappy over the acceleration of the company.

Active users on a monthly basis increased over 25% from the same period one year ago to more than 225 million as of the end of the quarter, March 31. That figure however was slightly less than expectations on Wall Street of monthly users in the amount of 256 million.

That figure spooked some investors, as Wall Street analysts have for a long period expressed some concern over the pace of user growth on Twitter.

Revenue from advertising grew by over 96% per thousand timeline reviews to $1.44, which is important, as Twitter gets ready to launch another 15 ad types that are new.

The guidance by the company was for the most part in-line with the expectations on Wall Street. However, shares dropped by over 9% in trading after hours to $38.74.

Twitter projects that revenue would be between $279 million and $280 million for its 2014 second quarter and between $1.2 billion and $1.25 billion for its 2014 fiscal year.

Analysts called for sales during the second quarter of $272 million, with full year of $1.24 billion.

A GAAP loss was reported by the company of $132 million equal to 23 cents per share. That compared to a loss of $27 million during the same period one year ago.

Excluding the compensation that was stock based of $126 million, Twitter announced earnings of $183,000.

The company also reported adjusted earnings that were breakeven per share, the closest the company has come to reporting profitability, which is better than the predicted loss of 3 cents by Wall Street.

Revenue during the most recent quarter was $250 million, which was an increase of 119% from one year ago when revenue was $114 million. That topped the Street’s estimate of $241 million.

The report comes one quarter following the announcement by the microblogging site that it had added just 9 million new users, which caused the stock to plummet 20%.