Twitter Inc. on Tuesday gave downbeat sales guidance for the current quarter and year, as first-quarter revenue rose less than expected.
Shares plunged in late-day trading, falling 18 percent to $42.27. The quarterly report — expected after the market close — came out earlier than expected because the website Selerity reported the company’s revenue missed expectations in a tweet.
For the current second quarter, the company expects revenue between $470 million to $485 million, below analyst estimates of $538 million. For the full year, the company expects sales of $2.17 billion to $2.27 billion, again below analyst estimates of $2.37 billion.
Separately, the company said that it has agreed to acquire marketing company Tell Apart Inc. and will partner with Google’s DoubleClick advertising platform. Financial terms of the TellApart deal, which is expected to close around June 1, weren’t disclosed.
The San Francisco-based company is under intense scrutiny as CEO Dick Costolo and his new leadership team try to show investors that they still have ways to reinvigorate user growth and generate the kind of revenue that matches the powerful platform’s cultural influence.
In the latest quarter, the number of Twitter users who log in at least once a month rose to 302 million in the March quarter, up 18 percent from the prior-year period.
Twitter has yet to eke out a profit amid ongoing investments on new data centers, office expansion and talent.
For the latest quarter, Twitter reported a loss of $162 million, or 25 cents a share, compared with a loss of $132 million, or 23 cents a share a year earlier. Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, the company’s per-share earnings rose to seven cents a share from zero cents a share in the prior-year period.
Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of four cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.
