In what could be its last report as a public company pending the $44bn deal with Elon Musk, social media company Twitter shared mixed first quarter results for 2022.

For the quarter ending 31 March, Twitter reported revenue of $1.2bn, a 16pc year on year increase. $1.11bn of this came from advertising, representing a 23pc increase.

The revenue result is on the lower end of the prediction Twitter made earlier this year when the company shared its fourth quarter results of 2021. The revenue also fell short of analyst expectations of $1.23bn according to Refinitiv. Twitter’s earnings per share for the quarter was $0.04, slightly higher than analyst predictions.

Twitter was more successful in its user growth, as monetisable daily active users (mDAU) reached 229m, a 15.9pc increase which beat analyst expectations of around 227m according to StreetAccount.

However, the social media company also issued a correction on the previous two years of mDAU numbers. Twitter said that it launched a feature in March 2019 that allowed people to link multiple separate accounts together. This led to Twitter overcounting these numbers from the first quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2021.

In the corrected numbers for the end of 2020 to 2021, the new mDAU figures are between 1.4m to 1.9m less in each quarter than Twitter previously reported.

In light of the pending deal with Musk which was accepted earlier this week, Twitter did not host a conference call or provide any outlook on the quarters ahead. The social media company said it expects the acquisition deal to close this year.

In February, Twitter CFO Ned Segal mentioned the tech giant’s ambitious goals of reaching 315m average monetisable daily active users by the fourth quarter of 2023 and $7.5bn or more in revenue. However, the company has withdrawn all previously provided goals and outlooks amid the acquisition deal.

Analysts previously speculated that Twitter may have wanted to finalise the deal with Musk before its mixed first quarter results were published, CNBC reported.

Twitter and Musk

The earnings report follows nearly a month of back-and-forth between the world’s richest man and the social media platform.

At the beginning of April, it was revealed that Musk had bought a significant stake in Twitter and became one of its biggest shareholders. It was then announced that he would be joining Twitter’s board of directors, with plans to bring “significant improvements”.

Days later, the plan to have him on the Twitter board fell through. But the Tesla boss then offered to take full control of the social media company and take it off the stock market with a “best and final” offer.

On Monday (25 April), the two sides reached the $44bn takeover agreement. It came after a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published on 21 April showed that Musk had been exploring a tender offer to acquire the company.

The documents showed that Musk had received commitments for funds to make the deal, including $25.5bn in debt financing from Morgan Stanley and other firms, and around $21bn in equity financing.

The takeover deal includes a clause whereby if either party ends up terminating the agreement, they have to pay the other a $1bn fee.

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