Twitter posted a Q4 2015 net loss of $90 million, down from $125 million a year ago, but for the first time since it went public, the size of its user base did not budge from the previous quarter.
The troubled company, which has yet to post a profit, saw Q4 revenue of $710 million, a 48 per cent increase year-on-year. The increase would have been 53 per cent had it not been for changes in foreign exchange rates. Total revenue for the year was $2.2 billion.
Q4 total average monthly active users (MAUs) were 320 million, up 9 per cent year-over-year, but the same figure as Q3 2015.
Mobile MAUs represented around 80 per cent of total MAUs.
Excluding users of its SMS Fast Followers service, which does not require a Twitter account, MAUs were 305 million for Q4, up 6 per cent year-over-year, but down 2 million from the previous quarter.
In a letter to shareholders, the company said “we saw a decline in monthly active usage in Q4, but we’ve already seen January monthly actives bounce back to Q3 levels. We’re confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time”.
CFO Anthony Noto further explained in an earnings call that Q4 historically has been Twitter’s seasonally worst and Q4 2015 was no exception.
“In addition to that seasonality at the top of the funnel, we did see a decrease in resurrected users. That was a reflection in both the seasonality as well as the fact that we made a conscious decision to reduce the volume of emails that we sent to dormant users to increase the quality of the communication that we have with those users that we’re trying to bring back to the service,” he added.
A big chunk of Twitter’s revenue – $641 million – came from ad revenue, which was up 48 per cent year on year, driven by ad engagements, which grew 153 per cent year-on-year.
Mobile ad revenue was 86 per cent of total ad revenue. The company said it made “significant progress in scaling the total number of active advertisers to 130,000 in Q4, up almost 90 per cent year over year.”
2015 saw the company add native video capabilities to Twitter, which led to video views rising by a factor of 220 from December 2014 to December 2015.
Last July following its Q2 results, CEO Jack Dorsey pointed out he was “not satisfied” with user growth and introduced several products, such as Moments, to change this.
What’s more, Periscope videos can now be viewed within the Twitter app, “giving broadcasters greater distribution and the ability to hook into our revenue products”.
In October when Dorsey permanently took over as CEO the company laid off 336 employees and last month announced the departure of four executives.
These efforts may be helping with ad revenue but user growth appears to have hit a wall, though the company continues to add new features.
This week, Twitter launched First View, giving marketers “exclusive ownership of Twitter’s most valuable advertising real estate for a 24-hour period”, as well as tweaking the way tweets are displayed on user’s timelines, despite concerns expressed by users before the actual announcement.
“We think there’s a lot of opportunity in our product to fix some broken windows and some confusing aspects of our service that we know are inhibiting growth,” Dorsey said on the earnings call.
Twitter said it has been considered a ’second screen’ for what’s going on in the world and added: “we believe we can become the first screen for everything that’s happening now”, adding that “we believe we can build the planet’s largest daily connected audience”.
It also pointed out five priorities for 2016: refinement of core service; live streaming video; creators and influencers; safety; and developers.
