Twitter Shares Plunge As Usage Number Falls

Twitter (Swiss: TWTR.SW - news) shares have plunged 14% in after-hours trading after its latest results showed it saw a decline in monthly active usage in the last quarter.

Revenues for the whole of 2015 were up 58% $2.2bn (£1.5bn) representing "another very strong year for Twitter".

But investors were instead focused on the number of users of the site.

The company said: "We saw a decline in monthly active usage in Q4, but we've already seen January monthly actives bounce back to Q3 levels. We're confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time."

Total (Other OTC: TTFNF - news) monthly active users (MAUs) were 320 million for the quarter, lower than expected and unchanged from the previous period. It was the first flat quarter-on-quarter performance since the company floated on the stock market in 2013.

But on an underlying basis stripping out SMS fast followers - people who sign up and access Twitter entirely using text messages - the figure was 305 million, down from 307 million in the third quarter. These SMS users are seen as hard to make money from.

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