Social Media : Twitter quarterly loss widens to $167m

Shares in Twitter are set to fall when Wall Street opens after it reported that its fourth-quarter losses had nearly doubled. 

The social networking service reported a loss of $167m (£133m) in the final three months of 2016, as against $90m in the same period a year earlier.

Active user numbers were slightly down at 319 million, compared with 320 million a year earlier.

Fourth-quarter revenues were $717m, 1% up on last year's $710m.

It was the company's slowest quarterly revenue growth since it became a publicly listed company in November 2013.

Revenues and user numbers both fell short of analysts' expectations.

'Toughest challenge'

Despite the increased losses, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said 2016 had been "a transformative year" for the service.

"We reset and focused on why people use Twitter: it's the fastest way to see what's happening and what everyone's talking about," he said.

"We overcame the toughest challenge for any consumer service at scale by reversing declining audience trends and re-accelerating usage."

He said daily active usage had risen for the third consecutive quarter and the upward trend was set to continue.

"While revenue growth continues to lag audience growth, we are applying the same focused approach that drove audience growth to our revenue product portfolio, focusing on our strengths and the real-time nature of our service.

"This will take time, but we're moving fast to show results."