Musk was to have been appointed to Twitter’s board on Saturday, but the world’s richest man informed the company that day that he would not, in fact, be taking the board seat.
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Twitter just reported earnings for the first quarter of 2022, in what could be one of its last reports as a public company after its board agreed to sell it to Elon Musk for $44 billion.
Here are the key numbers:
- Earnings per share: 4 cents, adjusted versus 3 cents expected, according to a Refinitiv poll of analysts
- Income: $1.2 billion versus $1.23 billion expected, according to Refinitiv
- Earnable Daily Active Users (mDAU): 229 million versus the expected 226.9 million, according to StreetAccount
Shares of Twitter rose 1% on Thursday.
Twitter missed analysts’ revenue estimates, reporting 1.2 billion versus the 1.23 billion analysts were expecting, according to Refinitiv. But it beat estimates for adjusted earnings per share of 4 cents, compared with the 3 cents expected.
The company said the 229 million mDAUs it reported in the quarter represented a 15.9% increase from the same period last year. In the US, mDAUs increased 6.4% from the year-ago quarter to 39.6 million. International mDAUs totaled 189.4 million, up 18.1% from a year ago.
It also corrected previously reported mDAU numbers that exceeded some accounts from Q1 2019 to Q4 2021. Twitter said the error, which incorrectly reported approximately 1.4 million to 1.9 million additional mDAUs per quarter during that period, has been did after launching a feature that allows users to switch between their separate accounts. As a result, the company said that during that period, all linked accounts were counted as mDAUs when an action was taken from the primary account.
Before the deal was officially announced on Monday, some analysts speculated that Twitter might have wanted to finalize the deal before reporting such weak earnings, predicting a disappointing quarter.
Snap reported last week that its revenue was affected by macroeconomic trends weighing on advertisers, which could similarly affect Twitter.
Although it could still be months before Musk’s deal to buy Twitter closes, the company canceled its usual earnings conference call in light of Monday’s acquisition news. It expects the deal to close this year.
Twitter also said it will not provide forward-looking guidance and is withdrawing the goals and outlook it previously provided.
Musk has signaled that he would like to use his ownership to make Twitter a more open platform, both through transparency in its algorithms and processes and by being more tolerant of differing views.
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