Short Interest in Twitter Soars 25%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 5:58PM EST · Published Nov 10, 7:25AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Short Interest in Twitter Soars 25% — © Wikimedia Commons

Ahead of the firing of Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) Chief Operating Officer Adam Bain, which drove the company’s stock down, and after dismal earnings, the short interest in the social media company soared 24.5%, which is 13.3 million shares to 67.8 million. The figure is for the period that ended October 31. Shares sold short are now 11.4% of the float.

Twitter has put out two specific pieces of bad news in a row:

Twitter, Inc. … announced that Adam Bain has informed the company of his decision to step down as COO and explore opportunities outside the company. Anthony Noto who has served as the Company’s Chief Financial Officer since July, 2014, has been named COO. As COO he will continue to manage the live content business, and assume responsibility for Twitter’s revenue generating organizations including global advertising sales, data, revenue product, and MoPub, as well as global partnerships and business development, effective immediately. Bain will assist with the transition of the COO role over the coming weeks

It is reasonable to ask whether Noto, a financial executive, has any background to qualify him for the job.

[nativounit]

Also:

Q3 revenue totaled $616 million, an increase of 8% year-over-year.
• Advertising revenue totaled $545 million, an increase of 6% year-over-year. Mobile advertising revenue was 90% of total advertising revenue.
• Data licensing and other revenue totaled $71 million, an increase of 26% year-over-year.
• U.S. revenue totaled $374 million, an increase of 1% year-over-year.
• International revenue totaled $242 million, an increase of 21% year-over-year.
• Total ad engagements were up 91% year-over-year.
• Cost per engagement (CPE) was down 44% year-over-year.

Additionally:

Average monthly active users (MAUs) were 317 million for Q3, up 3% year-over-year and compared to 313 million in the previous quarter.
• Average U.S. MAUs were 67 million for Q3, up 1% year-over-year and compared to 66 million in the previous quarter.
• Average international MAUs were 250 million for Q3, up 4% year-over-year and compared to 247 million in the previous quarter.

Short sellers have a good chance to expect user additions will continue to slow.

[wallst_email_signup]

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.