Twitter Earnings Cite User Growth as Musk Takeover Looms

Twitter continued to chip away at an ambitious target by adding users in the first quarter, an improvement that’s overshadowed by the £44 billion deal Elon Musk struck earlier this week to buy the influential social media company. 

The social media site said Thursday that 229 million users, a 15.9% year-over-year increase, logged onto the site daily in the quarter ended March.  The improvement, which came as part of Twitter’s earnings report, was eclipsed by Musk’s plans to acquire the social network. The mercurial CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has said he wants to loosen content moderation at the Twitter and has indicated he isn’t concerned with its performance as a business. 

The company, which canceled the analyst call that customarily follows earnings releases, said nothing in its press release about the pending acquisition, except that it won’t be providing any forward-looking guidance and that it is withdrawing all previously provided goals and outlook.   Earlier, Twitter had set goals of reaching 315 million daily users and increasing revenue to £7.5 billion by 2023. Musk, the world’s richest person, has said he wants to acquire Twitter because he doesn’t think the company adheres to the principles of free speech, a term he has used often and loosely.

On Tuesday, he tweeted, “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law.”  Under the First Amendment, free speech refers to protection from government interference. It doesn’t apply to companies such as Twitter. 

At a public engagement earlier this month, Musk said he doesn’t care about Twitter’s economics, which could deteriorate if looser moderation standards attract hate speech and harassment that drives away advertisers.

In the first quarter, Twitter generated revenue of £1.20 billion, up 16% year over year and beating expectations of £1.12 billion. 

In early trading Thursday, Twitter shares were up less than 1% to around £49.