Twitter on Tuesday beat quarterly sales and profit estimates but missed expectations on user growth and warned this rate would slow in the upcoming quarters. The company said it expected “modest impact” from the rollout of Apple’s planned “App Tracking Transparency” privacy changes to the iOS and iPadOS operating systems for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Apple’s new tool allows users to block advertisers from tracking them across different apps.
In the fourth quarter, Twitter said it had 192 million average monetizable daily active users (mDAU) – its term for the number of daily users who can view ads, up 26% from a year earlier. Analysts were expecting 196.5 million, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Twitter said that user growth rates may decrease to “low double digits” beginning in the second quarter.
Ad revenue was $1.15 billion, up 31% from the same period a year ago. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $1.19 billion, with ad sales totaling $1.05 billion.
Twitter said it expected total revenue in the current quarter to be between $940 million and $1.04 billion, compared to estimates of $965.14 million.
It said it expected “modest impact” from the rollout of Apple Inc’s planned privacy changes to the iOS system.
MacDailyNews Take: Like both Google and Facebook, Twitter desperately needs viable competition in order to keep them honest. The online world is awash in monopolies, stagnated and diminished by monopoly abuse.