Twitter (TWTR, $27.54) Posts Higher-than-Expected Earnings, Amidst Deletion of Suspicious Accounts

Twitter beat earnings and revenues expectations in Q3, even with  monthly active users lower than the previous quarter.

The social networking platform generated a $789 million profit, including one-time gains, compared to a net loss of $21 million in the year-ago period. Excluding one-time gains from tax and asset valuation adjustments items, profits were $163 million for the quarter. Per-share-earnings of $0.21 per share was higher than analysts' average estimate of $0.14 per share, according to Bloomberg.

Twitter's total revenues increased +29% to $758 million (vs. an expected $701 million according to Bloomberg), including those from advertising which surged +29% over the past year to $650 million.

The number of average monthly active users declined to 326 million in Q3, from 335 million in the previous quarter. Twitter claims the drop is due to its cleaning up the platform by removal of abusive users and fake accounts.

Its daily users however was up +9% in the past quarter, according to Twitter.