Twitter (TWTR, $59.91) beats Q4 earnings expectations

Twitter  reported fourth quarter earnings that crushed analysts’ expectations. Despite missing estimates for audience growth, the microblogging website experienced  solid year-over-year increase in revenue.

The company’s earnings came in at 27 cents per share, up from 15 cents per share a year ago. Excluding items, Twitter earned 38 cents per share.

Analysts polled by FactSet on average expected earnings of 29 cents a share. 

Revenue rose +28% from the year-ago quarter to $1.29 billion, topping FactSet consensus of $1.18 billion.

Twitter projects its  first quarter revenue to range between $940 million and $1.04 billion, compared to Wall Street analysts’ forecast of about $965 million.

According to the company, it could experience modest impact from Apple's  updated iOS 14, which has enhanced privacy settings for third-party apps from Twitter, Facebook   and others.

Twitter had 192 million average monetizable daily active users (mDAU) , compared with 152 million a year ago.  Analyst were expecting 196.5 million (based on Refinitiv data).