Page 12 - aruba-today-20220723

A12 business
Saturday 23 July 2022

Twitter, in Musk fight, posts surprising

drop in revenue

overshadowed almost ev-
erything. Twitter is attempt-
ing to force Musk to make
good on his April promise
to buy the company for
$44 billion. Twitter last week
sued Musk to complete the
deal and both sides are
bracing for an October
courtroom trial to resolve
the dispute.
The April-June fiscal quarter
encompassed a tumultu-
ous three months for Twit-
ter, starting with the April
4 disclosure that Musk had
acquired a huge stake in
The Twitter splash page is seen on a digital device, Monday, the company, paving the
April 25, 2022, in San Diego. way for his takeover bid lat-
Associated Press er that month. It didn't take
long for the relationship to
By KELVIN CHAN and MATT Twitter is holding no calls fray as Musk publicly tweet-
O'BRIEN with analysts and will not ed his concerns about Twit-
AP Business Writers publish a letter to share- ter and its employees and
LONDON (AP) — Twitter holders, as is the norm, be- signaled he was having
reported a quarterly loss cause of the pending ac- second thoughts.
Friday and declining rev- quisition. Twitter argued in court that
enue caught Wall Street off The underlying numbers Musk's actions and his "re-
guard with the number of at Twitter, however, were peated disparagement of
people using the platform good. The number of daily Twitter and its personnel"
on the rise. active users rose 16.6% to created uncertainty that
The latest quarterly earn- 237.8 million compared harmed Twitter's business
ings figures offered a with the same period a operations, employees
glimpse into how the social year before. and stock price.
media platform has per- Those numbers are particu- It called for an expedited
formed during a months- larly impressive in the wake trial so the company could
long negotiation with bil- of a quarterly earnings re- carry on with important
lionaire and Tesla CEO Elon port late Thursday from the business decisions, while
Musk after he said that he social media company Musk sought to wait until
would buy the company, Snap. next year because of the
and then changed his Snap also saw advertis- complexity of the case and
mind. ing tumble in the high- his demands for more of
It was worse than industry inflationary environment Twitter's internal data about
analysts had anticipated. and shares plunged more how it counts fake and au-
The company lost $270 mil- than 30% Friday before the tomated "spam bot" ac-
lion in the April-June pe- opening bell. counts — which he's cited
riod, or 8 cents per share. "When compared to the as a chief reason for trying
Wall Street was expect- nightmare quarter of SNAP to terminate the deal.
ing a per-share profit of 14 last night, it shows digital A judge this week set the
cents, according to a poll ad spending is not falling trial for October, siding with
by FactSet. off a cliff like feared which Twitter's concerns that too
Inflation has crimped ad- is a positive for others in the much delay could cause
vertising spending and space such as Facebook, the company irreparable
that was a huge drag on Pinterest, and Google," harm. It will be held in Dela-
Twitter's quarterly revenue, wrote Dan Ives, who covers ware's Court of Chancery,
which slid 1% to $1.18 bil- technology for Wedbush. which handles many high-
lion. The company also Shares of Twitter Inc. rose profile business disputes,
cited "uncertainty" over the 1% at the opening bell Fri- unless Musk and Twitter set-
acquisition by Musk. day as the clash with Musk tle the case before then.q

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