Twitter Q4 revenue up, user base at 330mn

San Francisco: With a monthly active user base of 330 million, Twitter registered $732 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2017 with a net income of $91 million.

Twitter had registered a loss of $167.1 million, or 23 cents a share, for the same period last year.

The micro-blogging platform reported $2.4 billion in revenue for 2017 -- a decrease of three per cent Year-on-Year (YoY).

"Q4 was a strong finish to the year. We returned to revenue growth, achieved our goal of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) profitability, increased our shipping cadence and reached five consecutive quarters of double-digit DAU growth," CEO Jack Dorsey said in a statement late on Thursday.

Average monthly active users' (MAUs) base was 330 million for the quarter - a flat quarter-over-quarter growth and up four per cent YoY.

Average daily active users (DAUs) grew 12 per cent YoY, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

The company generated $550 million in annual adjusted free cash flow compared to $444 million in 2016, and ended the year with $4.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

Total revenue in the fourth quarter increased two per cent YoY, and owned-and-operated advertising revenue increased seven per cent YoY.

"It was driven by continued strong engagement growth, improvements in our revenue products, improved return for advertisers and better sales execution," said Ned Segal, Twitter CFO.

During an investors' call, Dorsey said the 280-character tweets have led people to engage more on the platform.

"People do have the room - we're seeing less abandonment of tweets. But we're also seeing a lot more engagement. We're also seeing more retweets, and we're seeing a lot more mentions," Dorsey said.