Co-founder and product visionary Jack Dorsey is back as full-time chief executive (albeit splitting his time with Square Inc.), Adam Bain was promoted to chief operating officer, and former Google senior vice president Omid Kordestani is in as chairman.
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Twitter shares fell as investors awaited a permanent CEO, but have trended upward since Dorsey was appointed on October 5.
During the second quarter earnings call, Dorsey was very critical of the company, saying Twitter‘s recent performance was “unacceptable”. Twitter expects its third-quarter earnings to be at or above its forecast, which at the high end is an estimated $560 million in revenue and adjusted earnings of $115 million.
Dorsey has given back almost 15.1 million shares of Square stock during the past two years, too, according to Square’s IPO documents.
User growth is always a bit of a mystery with Twitter, but RBC Capital’s Mark Mahaney projects the company will have added about seven million new users over last quarter, jumping to 323 million in total (including those who receive tweets via text). Noto made a point that the company expects a few TellApart partners to stop doing business with the advertising company after Twitter takes control, since they’d be helping a competitor. TellApart specializes in cross-device retargeting, which helps ads convert better. Dorsey assumed the interim role at a time when the company’s user growth and engagement were sagging and earnings were lackluster. Well, those are the people Dorsey will be asked to impress on Tuesday when Twitter reports its third-quarter earnings results. The Estimize consensus is $561.2 million.
“Mass market penetration remains elusive”, Pachter says, cautioning investors to expect sluggish user growth to overshadow sales and earnings.
Dorsey has shown similar generosity before.
CEO JACK DORSEY: The third quarter was Jack Dorsey’s first as Twitter CEO.
Twitter said Dorsey’s shares will be earmarked for stock issued to employees next year under the company’s incentive plan.
Dorsey, 38, was named permanent chief executive this month after a lengthy process to find a successor for Dick Costolo, who stepped down July 1 amid criticism that Twitter wasn’t living up to its potential.
But one quarter isn’t enough for a CEO to set a company straight. His reasoning is that Twitter needs to become a stronger company and this is the road that the company must traverse to achieve this goal.
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“Somewhere along the line, our relationship with Developers got a little complicated”. Both features can bring more reasons to spending time on Twitter.
