Twitter announced the "widening" of its corporate losses, which reached $511 million, compared to losses of… $8.7 million a year ago, which caused the company's stock to fall by 18% on Wall Street.
According to the announcement of the social networking site's financial results, in the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2013, the company increased its "turnover" to $243 million, marking an increase of 116% compared to the corresponding period in 2012.
Moreover, Twitter recorded corporate losses of $511 million, compared to losses of $8.7 million a year ago.
However, calculating revenue without taking into account compensation based on the company's stock price and other expenses, Twitter reported a profit of $9.7 million, or 2 cents per share, in the quarter, compared with a loss of $271,000 a year ago.
Wall Street analysts, however, expected the company to report a fourth-quarter loss of 2 cents per share and revenue of $218 million.
In an unusual move for such a fast-growing company, Twitter has issued a financial forecast for both the first quarter of the year and for 2014 as a whole. According to these forecasts, the social networking site should expect revenue of $240 million in the first quarter, while the corresponding amount for 2014 will reach $1.2 billion. This is double the amount compared to 2013.
Company executives attributed the losses to the new page layout, which resulted in a decrease in the growth rate of new users and caused many existing users to "check" their messages less frequently.
The company's CEO Dick Costolo issued a "Mea Culpa," telling investors that "quite simply, we have to make Twitter better.".
Source: planet-greece.blogspot.com
