Short Interest in Twitter Falls

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Short Interest in Twitter Falls

© courtesy of Twitter Inc.

The short interest in Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) fell 8% in the period that ended on May 31 to 71.3 million shares. Perhaps rumors of a sale drove some shorts out, given Twitter’s management turmoil and battered share price.

Over the past month, Twitter’s stock has been flat. It rallied a bit last week, perhaps as the rumors hit the media. Two pieces of news also affected the stock.

The San Jose Mercury News reported:

“We want to underscore that we do not think the company is up for sale in the near term,” wrote Bob Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. “However we believe that if current trends persist, Twitter would be a top candidate in 2017.” Google, Facebook, Apple and traditional media companies are the most likely buyers, he wrote.

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Not all the evaluations are positive. According to Reuters:

Advertising agencies are for the first time turning to Instagram more frequently than Twitter for social media ad campaigns, a survey released Thursday showed, a further indication of weakness in an ad sales operation that has been one of the few bright spots for Twitter.

On a more positive note, Capital Market Laboratories reported:

The newly introduced Twitter Carousel made use of tweets in and of themselves. This new platform is data driven, one of Twitter’s revenue sources that, although it has grown quickly, is still tiny compared to its overall revenue base.

But the data analytics side of Twitter has the potential to be enormous, and at some point, it could make up a substantial portion of Twitter’s revenue. Beautifully, Twitter data can only be found on Twitter. There will be no Snapchat data product or Facebook friend-voyeurism data product.

Much of the news that moves Twitter’s stock price up and down should not have an effect. However, the shares exhibit a volatility that is not normal in other widely traded stocks.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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