6 numbers you need to know from Twitter’s first quarter results

When Twitter made its stock market debut, things looked pretty damn positive. In the immediate aftermath though things flattened out, at least in part because it remained to be seen how it would fare as a publicly listed company.

The answer, it turns out, is pretty solidly. How solidly? Well, the release of its Q1 results saw its stock take a pretty significant leap on the New York Stock Exchange. That jump, it seems, is largely thanks to decent user growth coupled with a serious increase in advertising revenue.

“We had a very strong first quarter. Revenue growth accelerated on a year over year basis fueled by increased engagement and user growth,” said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. “We also continue to rapidly increase our reach and scale. With the integration of MoPub, we now reach more than 1 billion iOS and Android users each month, making us one of the largest in-app mobile ad exchanges in the world and the only one at scale to offer native in-app advertising.”

Q1’14 revenue: $250M; adj. EBITDA: $37M; non-GAAP net income: $183K. Key info: http://t.co/ZxQwKK936C pic.twitter.com/4Sb7NnQOAG

— TwitterIR (@TwitterIR) April 29, 2014

We’ve highlighted some of the most important numbers unveiled by the social network in its quarterly results.

1. 255-million monthly users

In the previous quarter, Twitter passed 241-million active users. That means it’s managed to pick up around 14-million active users in the past month, something which would have been pretty big help in the 25% year-on-year increase it experienced.

2. 198-million monthly mobile active users

Twitter has been mobile from the get-go, so it’s no surprise that the vast majority of its users are on mobile. In fact, it would be probably be a little worrying if they weren’t. It will however be pleased that those numbers are up 31% from the same time last year, especially as Facebook’s mobile clout continues to grow.

3. 157-billion Timeline views

The reason Twitter’s excited about the 15% year-on-year increase in this number is because it means it’s managed to make Timelines more sticky, something which can only aid in its bids to draw in more advertising dollars. That much is evident from the fact that advertising revenue per thousand timeline views reached US$1.44 in the first quarter of 2014, an increase of 96% year-over-year.

4. US$250-million in revenue

Things are looking better and better for Twitter on the revenue front. The US$250-million it brought in this quarter represents an increase of 119% compared to US$114-million in the same period last year.

5. US$226-million in advertising revenue

For social networks like Facebook and Twitter advertising is pretty much everything. While they are experimenting with other models, advertising is their bread and butter. The fact that Twitter’s ad revenue increased 125% year-over-year would have come as very welcome news to its top execs.

The fact that mobile accounted for 80% of total advertising revenue would have been even more welcome, especially alongside a 183% year-over-year increase in international ad revenue.

6. US$132-million net loss

At first glance, this number seems pretty alarming especially when you compare it to the US$27-million net loss it experienced in the same period last year. When however you consider that it included US$126-million of stock-based compensation expense, then the math suddenly starts to look a lot less depressing.