Twitter shares plunge after user growth disappoints

Shares in Twitter plunged by around 14% after the social media company reported user growth that fell short of expectations.

Twitter released its third quarter report on Thursday alongside other household name tech companies including Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

The San Francisco-based company said it saw just 1 million new monetisable daily active users in the third quarter, taking it to 187 million.

Analysts on Wall Street had expected the site to reach 195 million monetisable daily active users in the period, according to FactSet.  

The company grew 29% year-on-year in the metric. It is Twitter’s own audience measuring method, only counting logged-in users who are shown advertising.

The reaction to its announcement erased gains of 8% during the regular trading session earlier on Thursday. Shares opened on Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange down 14.4%, to $44.73.

Twitter’s net income in the quarter fell by 22% year-on-year to $28.7 million.