Twitter rallies as growth for first quarter surpasses expectations

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) shares rallied more than 10 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday, following better-than-expected results for the quarter.

The social media network reported revenues of $548 million for the first quarter of the year, down 8 per cent year over year. Despite the fall, this remained above market expectations, providing a boost to shares in pre-market trading.

With regards to users, the platform revealed that monthly active users grew to 328 million, an increase of 9 million from the previous quarter. This marks a rise of 6 percent, and better than previous market expectations of 7 million.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, said: “We’re proud to report accelerating growth in daily active usage for the fourth consecutive quarter, up 14 per cent year-over-year,”

“While we continue to face revenue headwinds, we believe that executing on our plan and growing our audience should result in positive revenue growth over the long term.” He added.

Twitter has continually disappointed investors with poor results since its public listing in November 2013, as it continually struggles with declining advertising revenues, and finding a way to effectively monetize its popularity.

This marks a somewhat encouraging turn for the social network, having reported a loss of $167 million for the last quarter of 2016.

CFO Anthony Noto was eager to highlight strong live video performances for the company, stating:

“We’re proud of our performance in Live after just six months – last quarter alone we streamed more than 800 hours of live premium video and reached 45m unique viewers, an increase of 31 per cent from the previous quarter.”

Nevertheless, the company still remains behind competitors such as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Instagram and Snapchat with regards to performance and user activity.

Despite increased publicity garnered throughout the course of the US election as a result of President Trump’s affinity for tweeting, Twitter continues to struggle to counteract falling revenues.

Alongside this, social media networks remain under pressure to continue to tackle the epidemic of fake sweeping the internet in recent years, after concerns that it significantly impacts election outcome and promote cases of prejudice and political or religious violence.

Shares in Twitter are currently up 11.05 percent as of 13.20PM (GMT).