Twitter to Publish Quarterly Earnings

Twitter will publish its first quarterly earnings report today ahead of Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition.

The earnings report comes as Twitter’s board of directors accepted a $44 billion takeover bid from Musk earlier this week. Musk plans to initiate several changes to the platform, including relaxing its content restrictions, removing fake accounts and installing an open-source algorithm model.

Last quarter, Twitter’s average daily active users worldwide increased to 217 million, up 6 million from the previous quarter. However, Twitter also recorded a net income of $182 million in Q4, down 18%, as operating costs increased due to a rise in investment in infrastructure, marketing spending and hiring costs. Twitter reaffirmed its long-term goals for 2023 in its last quarterly report, which included attracting 315 million active daily users and $7.5 billion in revenue.

Expect Twitter to post quarterly earnings of $0.04 per share in its report, representing a year-over-year decline of 75%, while total revenues will be near $1.22 billion, up almost 18%. The quarterly release is unlikely to impact Musk’s purchase of the company for $54.20 per share. The introduction of open-source algorithms may reduce online propaganda and social media manipulation in the long-term by political actors. However, if Musk loosens content moderation tools, it will likely fuel partisanship and political polarization in the US in the short-term, promoting hate speech and misinformation.