NEW YORK (Reuters) - Twitter Inc said on Thursday revenue in the first quarter would be weaker than expected while full-year operating costs would rise, sending shares down more than 7 percent in premarket trading.
Investors’ concerns over the weak forecast overshadowed strong fourth-quarter results for the social media company that included a 24 percent jump in total revenue, helped by growth in its video advertising business.
Monthly active users totaled 321 million in the fourth quarter, in line with analysts’ forecasts but down from 330 million a year earlier and 326 million in the third quarter.
Starting in the current quarter, Twitter said it would stop disclosing the number of monthly active users, a statistic internet companies have routinely reported over the past decade. Instead, the company will provide monetizable daily active users, or the number of people who log in and are exposed to ads on Twitter on a daily basis.
“We want to align our external shareholders around one metric that reflects our goal of delivering value to people on Twitter every day and monetizing that usage,” said Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal.
Twitter said it expected total revenue of between $715 million and $775 million for the first quarter of 2019. The midpoint of that range was below analysts’ average estimate of $765 million, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Operating expenses were expected to surge about 20 percent year-on-year in 2019 due to efforts to improve the health of its platform, exceeding analysts’ average estimate of 12 percent.
Those higher costs could eat into Twitter’s future earnings, some analysts said.
“Yes, total user numbers are down,
