It looks like things might be turning around for Twitter, which had slumped since its initially favorable IPO last November.
Yesterday, after posting better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter, Twitter’s stock surged to $49.73 in after-hours trading, surpassing the $44.90 closing recorded the day the IPO launched. Early Wednesday, Twitter shares soared to a record $52.35 before losing some momentum, closing at $46.30. That was still up 20% from the yesterday’s close of 38.59 before after-hours trading began.
Is Twitter finally coming around? According to Wall Street experts, the answer is maybe. The earnings report revealed a significant jump in revenue ($312 million vs. $282.82 million) and EBITDA ($54 million vs. $30 million), as well as higher guidance for the third quarter. The results led to Bank of America upgrading the stock from Neutral to Buy while raising its target from $40 to $60 a share.
Reacting to the earnings, Benzinga.com noted that Bank of America analyst Justin Post wrote in a report that “Twitter’s ad platform may enable much better user monetization than expected, and new ad formats are launching which we think can be very successful and drive additional upside.”
Twitter racked up 271 million users in the quarter who logged into the site at least once a month, reports CNET. Although that was still an “anemic” increase of 6 percent from 255 million users in March, “it still was the largest rise in the past five quarters,” CNET writes.
The company’s “new metrics to measure how many people view tweets on TV and other websites” was another positive cited by CNET.
Twitter made a point of saying that the World Cup “didn’t cause the bump in monthly active users reported during the quarter.”
Time will tell whether Twitter will be able to catch up to rival Facebook, which closed at $74.68 on Wednesday.
Source: Twitter Shares Soar on Q2 Earnings; Bank of America Upgrades
Source: Twitter: Our growth is no fluke, Really
Image credit: Svartling, CC BY-SA 2.0. The image was unaltered from the original.