Twitter reported a surprise drop in its turnover in Q2 2020 and accuses Elon Musk of putting the company on the ropes after the decision to withdraw its $ 44 billion offer for 100% of the stake. . In quarterly data, Twitter posted a 2% increase in advertising revenue to $ 1.08 billion, while revenue stood at $ 1.18 billion compared to $ 1.19 billion in the same period last year. A negative result for Wall Street analysts who had expected a turnover of 1.32 billion. In the pre-market on Nasdaq, the stock loses 2.27%.
Twitter sued Musk for withdrawing the purchase offer. Tesla’s boss justified his decision by saying that the company would refuse to provide data on the number of fake accounts on the platform. The trial will take place in October.
237 million active users. Bot less than 5%
Twitter has updated data on real and fake accounts on the platform on a quarterly basis. According to the company’s numbers, monetizable active users (i.e. real accounts on the platform) rose by 16.6% in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.
The analysis
Musk, Twitter and the role of bots. A brief history of a marriage that never happened
by Arcangelo Rociola
The average daily figure of active users is 237.8 million accounts. While fake accounts would be less than 5% of users in the second quarter of 2022, about 12 million profiles.
Returning to financial results, the company reported a loss of $ 270 million, or 35 cents per share, compared to a year-ago earnings of $ 65.6 million, or 8 cents per share.
The decline in advertising. The role of Apple and TikTok
Twitter therefore plays in defense and accuses Musk of the lower-than-expected turnover. For the company, the entrepreneur is guilty of creating uncertainty about the group, driving away customers and advertisers. But it is the social media market that is struggling overall. Twitter is suffering from the drop in advertising just as Snapchat’s accounts showed yesterday, which spoke of an “incredibly difficult” time when advertisers cut back on spending.
Twitter, like Snapchat, Google and Meta, recorded a sharp surge in revenues last year, thanks largely to the online spending of advertisers who invested heavily in communication in view of the reopening after the pandemic.
The character
Who is Kathaleen McCormick, the judge who will decide who is right between Twitter and Musk
by Arcangelo Rociola
Today, however, these companies, which have benefited over the years from lockdowns and anti Covid measures, have to deal with inflation that has already forced several companies to revise their spending budgets.
Not only. The social networks of the first generation, and Twitter is among them, today find themselves having to deal with the new protagonists of platforms such as TikTok, which has been able to quickly conquer the new generations. While Apple’s decision to give users the ability to choose whether or not to be tracked by these companies in order to target advertising is also weighing on revenues.