*By Carlo Versano*
Twitter shares are surging Thursday after the company smashed its third-quarter earnings report, posting a nearly 30 percent increase in year-over-year revenue and a 9 percent increase in the all-important daily active user metric. The release did not disclose the actual number of DAUs.
Shortly before 10 a.m., shares were soaring more than 17 percent, despite the report also disclosing a decline in monthly active users ー from 335 million in the second quarter to 326 million. It's a drop of 4 million year-on-year. Twitter ($TWTR) said that was in part due to a mass culling of bot, troll and fake accounts. The company said there were 20 percent fewer malicious or spammy account sign-ups from the previous quarter, thanks to "decisions we have made to prioritize the health of the platform."
On the earnings call, CEO Jack Dorsey said those decisions will act as a "growth vector" long term. In a statement attached to the earnings release, he said:
"This quarter’s strong results prove we can prioritize the long-term health of Twitter while growing the number of people who participate in public conversation.”
He added: "We're also continuing to introduce improvements that make it easier for people to follow events, topics and interests on Twitter, like adding support for US TV shows in our new event infrastructure."
After years of burning cash, this marks Twitter's fourth consecutive quarter of showing profitability.
Twitter posted adjusted earnings of 21 cents a share on revenue of $758 million. It was the company's fourth straight quarter of profit.
Shares posted their biggest gains in a year.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
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A group of book authors has reached a settlement with AI company Anthropic after suing for copyright infringement. A federal appeals court filing Tuesday said both sides have negotiated a proposed class settlement, with terms to be finalized next week. Anthropic declined to comment. A lawyer for the authors called it a "historic settlement." In June, a federal judge ruled that Anthropic didn't break the law by training its chatbot on copyrighted books. However, the company was still facing trial over acquiring those books from online "shadow libraries" of pirated copies.
