Twitter beats forecasts by announcing Q2 revenue of US$502m


28 Jul 2015

Twitter has announced second-quarter revenue of US$502m, marking a 61pc rise year-over-year for the social network.

The figure is well above the previously forecast range of $470m to $485m. Excluding the year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, revenue would have increased by 68pc.

Twitter’s advertising revenue rose 63pc year-over-year to $45m, with mobile ad sales making up 88pc of that total. The company remains unprofitable, however. Its loss improved just marginally to a loss of US$137m from US$145m last year.

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Average monthly active users for the quarter hit 316m, up 15pc year-over-year, and compared to 308 million in the previous quarter. However, this figure was largely due to ‘SMS Fast Followers’. That is, mobile users who subscribe to updates from a select Twitter account via text message without signing up for an account themselves. Without these users, Twitter would have had pretty much the same amount of active users as during Q1.

“Our Q2 results show good progress in monetisation, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience,” said Twitter’s interim CEO Jack Dorsey in a statement. “In order to realise Twitter’s full potential, we must improve in three key areas: ensure more disciplined execution, simplify our service to deliver Twitter’s value faster, and better communicate that value.”

After Dick Costolo’s surprise decision to leave his role as Twitter CEO last month, Dorsey, the company’s co-founder and current leader of e-payments firm Square, stepped into the position on an interim basis, and is currently leading both companies simultaneously. Dorsey is expected to depart Twitter in the near future, though. Last month he was told that if he wants the job full-time, he’ll have to quit Square.