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Parag Agrawal’s first earnings report since taking the top job at Twitter was mixed.
Twitter has released its first earnings report since Jack Dorsey’s departure as CEO last November.
The company’s results for its fourth quarter and 2021 fiscal year were mixed, however new CEO Parag Agrawal described the annual performance as “strong”.
Twitter reported revenue of $1.57bn in the final three months of the year, which was up 22pc from the same period in the previous year but was slightly lower than analysts’ expectations.
Operating income declined 34pc to $167m and the company reported a 13pc increase in the number of monetisable daily active users. Earnings and user growth both missed analyst expectations, according to a Refinitiv survey.
The company said its board of directors has just authorised a new $4bn share repurchase programme, effective immediately. It intends to enter into a $2bn accelerated share repurchase and repurchase the remaining $2bn over time.
Agrawal remained optimistic about Twitter’s future growth plans. “Our strong 2021 performance positions us to improve execution and deliver on our 2023 goals,” said the former CTO.
“We are more focused and better organised to deliver improved personalisation and selection for our audience, partners and advertisers.”
Ned Segal, the company’s CFO, said there would be no changes to the tech giant’s goal of reaching 315m average monetisable daily active users by the fourth quarter of 2023 and $7.5bn or more in revenue. The number of monetisable daily active users stood at 217m at the end of 2021.
Segal added that Twitter’s “increased focus on performance ads and the SMB opportunity” after the recent sale of its mobile ad platform MoPub to AppLovin for $1.05bn positioned it “even better for 2022 and beyond”.
“Twitter had a solid fourth quarter to finish 2021, with over $5bn in annual revenue, up 37pc for the year,” Segal said.
For the first quarter of 2022, Twitter is predicting revenue of between $1.17bn and $1.27bn.
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