What is going on with TWTR?

[RGLD]

I fail to understand why this stock is getting it's ass handed to it so much.

Current Qtr. 10.00%
Next Qtr. 6.30%
Current Year 30.00%
Next Year 25.00% 0.30
Next 5 Years (per annum) 43.00%

EPS and Rev has been on average surprising investors 20%+. Yet this stock has been going down for years... Am I missing something here? I am not a big TWTR fan.

 

[Baron]

What do you mean EPS? TWTR has never earned one penny after expenses. In fact, they lose about a half billion dollars per year. Here's their 3-year breakdown:

Translation: THEY MAKE NO MONEY. In fact, all they've done so far is LOSE INVESTOR'S MONEY. Of course their ass is going to get handed to them.

 

[lawrence-lugar]

No one takes Twitter seriously, sure it may be fun and cute and somewhat actually useful -- but I can't imagine advertisers would want to necessarily drop boat loads of money on it.
People just whimsically skim that site only for bs uses

 

[Baron]

The other issue that you're going to have with TWTR as of today is that Facebook just released their earnings and they beat expectations, which ultimately means this: Facebook is making money. So now Facebook represents the flight-to-quality in the social media space, which leaves TWTR looking like a complete train wreck, which it is. Look, Twitter is no spring chicken. They've been around since 2006, which means they've had a complete decade to figure out how to monetize their service. If they haven't figured it out by now, it's likely not going to happen. The most they can hope for is a fire-sale buyout like the one YHOO just went through, based strictly on the fact that they have a lot of users. But who couldn't get a lot of users offering something for free that's ultimately a huge money loser?

When it comes to mass market social networks, teens are using Snapchat and Instagram, and adults are using Facebook for personal and Linkedin for professional. Some say TWTR is more suited for "real time news" but I just don't think this world was ever lacking in news sources to begin with, especially considering that TWTR doesn't actually create any news, but instead is just a middle man between the consumer and the actual news source. It's actually a really shitty position to be in.

 

[birzos]

This was known by us some time ago via via, most Twitter users are fake and heard estimates of 80%+ that are used to generate traffic and increase profiles. You can't monetise bots and offshore follow creators, so Twitter's now priced correctly, probably go down to $7-10 so it's oversold but that's another subject.

The other problem with Twitter is the character limit, people want to write more these days, be that good or bad! Facebook on the other hand is a real business and will likely grow.

 

[RGLD]

Hi Baron,

Thank you for your input.

I normally don't look at income sheets, I just look at Earnings Per Share & Revenue.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TWTR/analysts?p=TWTR


If you look at Earnings history it says they been beating EPS for the last 4 quarters?! How is that possible??

Also Growth Estimates are 30% this year... Do my eyes play me false????


P.S.

I am 100% for FB. I never bought a share of TWTR in my life but I did think about writing puts at $15.

 

[TradeCat]

TWTR is today what TSLA will be in less than a decade.

 

[Baron]

I normally don't look at income sheets, I just look at Earnings Per Share & Revenue.

Yeah, skip the analysts tab on that page. You need to look at the real financials, not guesses by analysts. If you look at the stats I posted above, every number in red means a loss, which doesn't paint a very pretty picture overall.

 

[Baron]

Here's the same data set going back 5 years this time. And as you can see in the net income row at the bottom, it's nothing but red every single year. I don't have a calculator on me but this looks like it's a little shy of $2 Billion lost of investor's money over the last 5 years. Not really what you would call a stellar performer.

 

[RGLD]

I am just wondering where the "analyst" are getting this very high EPS beats from.

For example EPS for this quarter was 0.13. That's not an estimate. If their net income has been in the red for 5 years, how are they getting 0.13?

I use the analyst tab for every stock and this is the only one where it's inconsistant with the stock performance. If you look at the same for FB, everything makes sense and the stock price agrees.

TWTR must be cooking the book somehow but investors are too smart to fall for it.