Twitter Inc. today posted fourth-quarter revenue of $1.57 billion, 22% more than a year ago but slightly less than what analysts were expecting. 

While Twitter logged sales of $1.57 billion in the three months ended Dec. 31, analysts polled for the Refinitiv consensus estimate were expecting $1.58 billion. The company’s adjusted earnings, in turn, amounted to 33 cents per share, whereas analysts were hoping for 35 cents.

Twitter’s shares were rising less than a half percentage point in midday trading today after the early-morning earnings report.

The bulk of Twitter’s quarterly revenue was generated by its advertising business, which achieved sales of $1.41 billion after growing 22% on a year-over-year basis. Twitter’s data licensing and other revenue segment accounted for the remaining $154 million of the $1.57 billion in total sales it posted for the quarter. The data licensing and other revenue segment achieved year-over-year growth of 15%.

An important revenue-related metric that Twitter uses to track its business, monetizable daily active users, jumped 37%, to 217 million. The company had 192 million monetizable daily active users the same time a year ago. 

Under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, who took the helm in November, Twitter is pursuing an effort to reach 315 million average monetizable daily active users by the fourth quarter of 2023. Furthermore, the company is seeking to achieve revenue of at least $7.5 billion in the process.

“Our strong 2021 performance positions us to improve execution and deliver on our 2023 goals,” Agrawal said in a statement today. “We are more focused and better organized to deliver improved personalization and selection for our audience, partners, and advertisers.” 

As part of its growth plans, Twitter sold its MoPub mobile advertising unit for $1.05 billion in a deal that closed earlier this year. The company said at the time that offloading the unit will enable it to focus “more of our efforts on the massive potential for ads on our website and in our apps.” MoPub, which became part of Twitter through a 2013 acquisition, developed a cloud platform that enables mobile developers to make money from their apps by delivering personalized ads to users. 

Twitter’s fourth-quarter results propelled its total 2021 revenue to $5.08 billion, a 37% improvement over fiscal 2020. The company’s adjusted operating income in the year was $273 million.

In its guidance, Twitter said it expects to close the current quarter with revenue of $1.17 billion to $1.27 billion. The high end of the range exceeds the approximately $1.26 billion expected by analysts polled for the Refinitiv consensus estimate.

In conjunction with the release of its fourth-quarter results, Twitter announced a new $4 billion share repurchase program. It replaces an existing $2 billion program launched in 2020, of which about $819 million remained. Half of the $4 billion will be used for an accelerated share repurchase and the remaining will go toward buying back shares over time, the company said.

Photo: Unsplash