The group, which sued Musk to fulfill its purchase commitment in a trial that will begin in October, saw its turnover fall in one year (-1%), to 1,180 million dollars, with a net loss of 270 million dollars. dollars in the second quarter, according to a statement published on Friday.
On a per share basis, Wall Street’s preferred gauge, the loss was almost triple what analysts had expected.
This fall is attributed to “headwinds” in the advertising sector, fears weighing on the economic situation, but also to “uncertainty related to the ongoing acquisition of Twitter” by Elon Musk.
“Twitter is on a boat in the middle of the storm,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence.
The number of daily active users called “monetizable”, that is, who can be exposed to advertising on the platform, increased by 8.8 million, reaching 237.8 million.
“It’s better than we expected and the numbers are relatively strong considering the current environment,” Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a note.
But in an environment of tightening credit conditions and a progressive economic slowdown, companies whose business model is entirely based on advertising suffer from reduced advertising budgets.
On Thursday, for example, Snap – parent of Snapchat – posted a larger-than-expected loss and lower-than-expected revenue, forcing it to drop more than 39% on Wall Street on Friday.
Looking at the case of Twitter, “compared to Snap’s nightmare yesterday” Thursday, “we see that advertising has not collapsed,” Ives said.
Twitter gained 0.81% to 39.84 dollars at the end of the week, in a market that preferred to value the increase in the number of active users of the social network.
– The Twitter-Musk saga –
After Musk’s resignation from the purchase of Twitter at the beginning of July, the platform followed the judicial route, where the executives of the network intend to ensure that the tycoon is forced to acquire it as he had announced.
On Tuesday, a judge in a specialized court in Delaware (northeastern United States) ordered a short trial for five days in October to resolve the dispute.
The magistrate agreed to Twitter’s request for an accelerated procedure to limit the damage of this saga on the group, and dismissed, on the other hand, the arguments of Musk’s lawyers, in favor of legal proceedings not beginning before 2023 .
Musk accused Twitter executives of lying about the proportion of automated accounts and spam on the platform, and of not providing him with enough information to verify his data.
The group disputed those claims and accused Musk of using them to create a market distraction.
Many investors see Twitter in a better position for the process, and its share price rebounded.
