Is the bar set too low for Twitter’s earnings?
Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) was scheduled to report its second-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for $0.04 in earnings per share (EPS) on $481.13 mln in revenues. In the same period of the previous year, the social media company posted EPS of $0.02 and $312.17 mln in revenue.
Just looking at where the stock is right now, it is hovering just above its 52-week lows. So far year to date shares are down 1.3% and even down 8.5% in the last 52weeks. It’s very possible that analysts may have taken an overly negative tone on the estimates ahead of earnings considering these lows. Needless to say it would appear that the bar is set incredibly low.
Given the purpose of social media to network, connect and share information, Twitter must stay on the cutting edge of these trends, continually improving its users’ experience as well as its own network. Through a recent partnership with Google Inc., Twitter has succeeded in doing both, according to a key analyst.
Canaccord Genuity thinks Twitter has done well in executing on the initiatives set out during its analyst day back in November. However little traction has actually been made on the user front. The brokerage firm thinks there could be a lag between product roll-outs and monthly active user (MAU) growth.
However the Google integration may have a sizable impact. Google attracts the most traffic of any property globally on desktop and mobile, and visitors specifically to its U.S. mobile search property represent an opportunity to expose 100 mln monthly users to Twitter content.
Only a few weeks into the partnership, a proprietary survey from Canaccord Genuity has shown that real-time tweets already show up in 54% of the Google search queries sampled. Twitter yet again proves its legitimacy as a live news platform, as 90% of news-related searches surface tweets.
Ultimately, Canaccord Genuity believes that this is just the beginning for the Twitter/Google integration. Rolling out to desktop and international could significantly increase the reach and the performance of these tweets.
The firm estimates the integration currently could add about 3.5 mln additional visitors to Twitter from Google with this first iteration. This i mpact could potentially expand to greater than 40 mln over time.
