Tag Archives: lnkd

Will Twitter Show A Reversal In User Declines With Q1 Earnings?

Under pressure from slowing user growth, Twitter ( TWTR ) is set to report first-quarter earnings after the market close Tuesday. It’s a busy week for social networking stocks, with Facebook ( FB ) reporting Wednesday and LinkedIn ( LNKD ) on Thursday. Twitter reports during a rough period for the company. Revenue growth has declined year over year for the past six quarters, and user growth has declined the past four quarters. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Twitter to report Q1 revenue of $607.8 million, up 39% year over year, with earnings per share minus items rising 43%, to 10 cents. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney said data from research firm ComScore was “slightly negative” for Twitter, indicating a slowdown in unique visitors from Q4. He also said a survey of ad professionals conducted by RBC and Ad Age showed mixed results for Twitter. “We are incrementally more cautious on the stock’s prospects as a result,” wrote Mahaney, who has a sector perform rating on Twitter stock and a price target of 23. Since Twitter reported Q1 2015 earnings that revealed trouble ahead, the stock has plunged to 17 from 51. Twitter stock closed Monday at 17.09, down a fraction. In Q4, average monthly active users at Twitter rose 9% year over year, to 320 million, about 3 million less than Wall Street had expected. The Q4 growth was the same as Q3. Growth has cooled from 18% in Q1 2015, 15% in Q2 and 11% in Q3. The slowdown continues despite a series of new features Twitter has rolled out in the past year, including video tool Periscope and Moments. The company has overhauled management, starting with the return of co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO in October. Dorsey is also the founder and CEO of payment processing firm Square ( SQ ). Facebook Q1 earnings come after the close Wednesday. The consensus on Facebook revenue is $5.25 billion, up 48%. Analysts expect EPS ex items to hit 62 cents a share, also up 48%. LinkedIn reports after the close Thursday. The stock bombed 44% to a three-year low after LinkedIn posted Q4 earnings on Feb. 5, as Q1 guidance widely missed estimates. LinkedIn acknowledged that a reshuffling of product strategy will impact short-term revenue growth in favor of the long term. The consensus on revenue is $829.5 million, up 39%. EPS is figured at 60 cents, up 5%.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter Earnings Put Light On Social Networks

Social networking, a top tech trend the past decade, will get the spotlight with earnings reports next week, starting with Twitter ( TWTR ) on Tuesday and followed by Facebook ( FB ) on Wednesday and LinkedIn ( LNKD ) on Thursday, all after the market close. Twitter reports during a tumultuous period for the company. Revenue growth has decelerated for the past six quarters as user growth has slowed for four consecutive quarters . The slowdown continues despite a series of new features Twitter has rolled out in the past year, including video tool Periscope and Moments. The company has overhauled management, starting with the return of co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO in October. Dorsey is also the founder and CEO of payment processing firm Square ( SQ ), thus is juggling two heavy clubs. Since Twitter reported Q1 2015 earnings that revealed trouble ahead, the stock has plunged to 17 from 51. Twitter stock fell 1.6% in the stock market today , closing at 17.23. The consensus estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters is for Twitter to report Q1 revenue of $607.8 million, up 39% year over year, with earnings per share minus items rising 43%, to 10 cents. Facebook Hopes To Keep Q4 Momentum Facebook Q1 earnings will come after the close Wednesday. The company soundly beat Q4 earnings expectations on booming mobile ad revenue, with the stock up 16% since then, though shares fell 2.5% Friday, to 110.56. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a 10-year strategy for Facebook at its annual F8 Developer Conference last week. He emphasized pushing its Messenger chat platform deeper into the business world with chatbots, enhancing Live video with virtual reality and expanding the social network to remote regions of the world. Analysts say the monetization strategy of Messenger will closely follow that of Instagram, with both platforms seen becoming multibillion-dollar businesses . The consensus on Facebook revenue is $5.25 billion, up 48%. Analysts expect EPS ex items of 62 cents, also up 48%. In what could be a long-term nightmare scenario for Facebook, users are feeling weary about posting personal reflections and updates on their daily lives. LinkedIn, the business networking site for professionals, saw its stock bomb 44% to a three-year low after the company posted Q4 earnings on Feb. 5, as its Q1 guidance widely missed estimates. LinkedIn acknowledged that a reshuffling of product strategy will impact short-term revenue growth in favor of the long term. LinkedIn stock has recovered about 10% since that 44% drop. It fell a fraction Friday, to 119.45. The consensus on revenue is $829.5 million, up 39%. EPS is figured at 60 cents, up 5%.

Jury Out On Whether Ad Blocking A Help Or A Hurt To Programmatic

The jury’s still out on whether ad blocking will help or hurt the expansion of programmatic advertising, a survey of U.S. marketers has found. Wall Street has expressed off-and-on concern that Apple ‘s ( AAPL ) decision to let users install apps that prevent ads from appearing in its Safari mobile browser could cut into the business of ad-tech companies, but an industrywide decline has not materialized. A March survey by investment bank RBC Capital Markets and Advertising Age found that 58% of respondents believe ad-blocking technology will have a “somewhat negative” effect on the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Another 20% of respondents said ad blocking will have a “significantly negative” effect on the programmatic advertising space, said the survey, which was reported by research group eMarketer on Wednesday. Still, some marketers believe ad blocking could be good for programmatic, with 6% of the marketers surveyed saying ad blocking would have either a “significantly positive” or “somewhat positive” effect on automated ad buying. Even so, some senior ad buyers in the U.S. are bracing for trouble as programmatic advertising expands. The RBC survey found that 57% of ad buyers listed multidevice measurement as a problem for programmatic, followed by fraud (47%), ad blocking on smartphones (35%) and privacy issues (18%). Gaming, social networking and tech-related websites are said to be most affected by ad-blocking software. Gaining Steam Seven months after Apple made ad blocking possible on iOS mobile phones , eMarketer says that the trend is gaining steam. That could mean companies including Alphabet ( GOOGL ) search unit Google, French ad firm Criteo ( CRTO ) and others that rely on advertising to make money aren’t totally in the clear, though they’ve said that ad blocking isn’t affecting their business. Ad sales conducted by machines rather than ad salespeople — so-called programmatic ads — take less time to execute and cost advertisers less, which accounts for their popularity with advertisers, though it tends to lower revenue for online-ad platforms. Ad blockers serve to reduce the amount of bandwidth that a user needs by cutting down the amount of content — seen and unseen — that a page has to load. They can also help with privacy by blocking programs that track users’ browsing habits — good for users, bad for advertisers who want to show their ads to people who are the most likely to buy their products. Mobile is driving programmatic advertising growth, with mobile accounting for more than two-thirds of all programmatic digital display-ad spending this year, says eMarketer in a report on Tuesday. Facebook ( FB ), Google-owned YouTube, LinkedIn ( LNKD ) and others are helping to drive the trend. Declining Growth Rate U.S. programmatic digital display-ad spending is projected to rise to $27.4 billion in 2017, up 24%, eMarketer said last week. But that growth rate is declining from a projected 39% this year and 53% in 2015, the research group said. Mobile programmatic spending will reach $15.45 billion in the U.S. in 2016, representing 69% of all programmatic digital display-ad spending, according to eMarketer. That’s up from 60% in 2015 and 46% in 2014. Apple stock climbed 1% in midday trading in the stock market today , near 112, and is up more than 20% since touching an eight-month low early this year. Alphabet stock rose by a fraction, near 770 and approaching a cup-with-handle breakout buy point at 777.41.