Twitter bested Wall Street earnings expectations with its third financial quarter of the year, the company said Tuesday, and also beat out revenue expectations.
In a release accompanying the numbers, the company touted increased monthly active users compared to a year ago, as well as significantly boosted ad revenue over year-ago numbers.
The company reported diluted earnings per share of 10 cents, versus the 5 cent estimate that analysts had predicted.
On the revenue front, Twitter reported $569 million for the quarter — a 58 percent year-over-year increase — versus $560 million that Wall Street had expected.
In its earnings release Tuesday, Twitter touted advertising revenue of $513 million, a 60 percent leap over year-ago numbers.
In active monthly users, Twitter claimed modest gains, with 320 million, an 11 percent increase over the same quarter last year and up slightly from the 316 million last quarter.
The positive financial news is needed for the company, which has spent much of the year in tumult. Company co-founder Jack Dorey was officially installed as CEO in October, and promptly slashed 8 percent of the company’s workforce. In the past year, the Twitter’s stock has slid 38 percent.
“We continued to see strong financial performance this quarter, as well as meaningful progress across our three areas of focus: ensuring more disciplined execution, simplifying our services, and better communicating the value of our platform,” Dorsey said Tuesday. “We’ve simplified our roadmap and organization around a few big bets across Twitter, Periscope, and Vine that we believe represent our largest opportunities for growth.”
During a conference call following the earnings announcement, Dorsey also talked about Twitter’s recently launched Moments tab, which he said “represents a real fundamental shift in our thinking” and a break from Twitter’s tradition reverse-chronological narrative approach.
Dorsey promised that there would be more simplification efforts in the future.
“That’s just one initiative around making Twitter easier to understand. There will be many, many more,” Dorsey said.