Twitter’s better-than-expected earnings report Thursday morning has sent its stock soaring.
The NYSE-traded stock is up 19 percent over its open Thursday, following its earnings release. As The Hollywood Reporter noted, the company’s earnings of $0.10 per share soundly beat analysts’ more modest expectations of a 6-cent return.
Company executives also claimed that Twitter should see profitability by the close of the year, SFGate.com reported.
The development comes the same day that the San Francisco-based company announces a ban on advertising from Russian government-connected news services, Russia Today and Sputnik.
“This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government,” the company said in a statement, reported TechCrunch.
The Russian foreign ministry has since responded, with a spokeswoman ominously warning that “there will be retaliatory measures” taken by Moscow.
On Wednesday, Twitter announced it was launching an Advertising Transparency Center to help users review data about ad campaigns and report ones they consider to be inappropriate, part of a broader effort to crack down on bullying and foster growth in its user base.
“We’re committed to making Twitter safer, and we continue to improve and leverage our technology to reduce the reach of abusive tweets,” Twitter said in a shareholder letter, SFGate.com reported.
“This quarter, we further refined our machine-learning algorithms in order to better identify and act on accounts demonstrating abusive behavior. Moving forward, we’re focused on addressing this issue from a policy, enforcement, and product perspective, and we’ll be taking a more aggressive stance on our abuse rules and on how we enforce them.”
• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.
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