Twitter posts 9% growth in Q3 revenue

U.S. social media company Twitter Inc. Thursday said it earned a revenue of 824 million U.S. dollars for the third quarter of this year, up 9 percent year over year.

The company said the gains reflected "strength in September in the United States," but analysts said the figure missed market exceptions of 874 million dollars, although it was an increase from 758 million dollars a year ago.

Twitter added that its net income came in at 37 million dollars, representing a net margin of 4 percent.

Twitter said the Q3 revenue also was a result of a number of headwinds including product issues and a fall in advertising revenue for the period between July and August.

Its advertising income missed market estimates of 756 million dollars, earning only 702 million dollars for the quarter, which was an 8-percent growth over 2018.

Twitter admitted the lower-than-expected growth was in part affected by product bugs that "primarily affected our legacy Mobile Application Promotion (MAP) product, impacting our ability to target ads and share data with measurement and ad partners."

"Issues relating to our revenue products reduced year-over-year growth by 3 or more points in Q3," Ned Segal, Twitter's chief financial officer told investors at a conference call on Thursday.

However, the San Francisco-based company reported a 17-percent jump in monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAU) in the third quarter.

The increase is equal to about 145 million mDAU, compared with 124 million in 2018 and 139 million in the previous quarter.

"We drove strong growth in monetizable DAU (mDAU), up 17 percent year-over-year, driven by ongoing product improvements," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Twitter expects its total revenue for the fourth quarter to reach between 940 million dollars and 1.01 billion dollars, with operating income ranging from 130 million dollars to 170 million dollars.