Twitter Inc. on Tuesday said earnings in the first three months of the year more than tripled on strong ad demand while user numbers posted healthy growth.
The company said the number of daily users rose 11% to 134 million for the first quarter of 2019, thanks to both "organic growth as well as ongoing product improvements and marketing."
The San Francisco company started disclosing its daily user base in the previous quarter. These are users who log into the site at least once a day and see advertisements on the platform. Twitter says daily metric will replace its monthly user count, which it will stop disclosing.
The company posted profit of $190.8 million, or 25 cents per share, for the first quarter. After adjusting for one-time gains and costs, earnings came to 9 cents per share, short of Wall Street expectations. Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research forecast earnings of 15 cents per share.
Revenue came in at $786.9 million in the period, beating analyst forecasts of $774.9 million.
Twitter said advertising demand in the first quarter grew strongly, led by the U.S., where ad revenue rose by a quarter.
Operating expenses rose 18% to $693 million
For the current quarter ending in July, Twitter said it expects revenue in the range of $770 million to $830 million. Analysts surveyed by Zacks had expected revenue of $821 million.
In premarket trading, Twitter shares soared 8 percent. The stock has increased 20% since the beginning of the year.
Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on TWTR.
