Less Than a Year Ago, I Said Twitter was a Screaming Buy – Was I Right?

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by Fred Fuld III

It was only about ten months ago, on August 2, 2017, that I wrote the article, Why Twitter is a Screaming Buy. I discussed several reasons, including Twitter’s biggest asset (Donald Trump). Also, an extensive coverage of earnings and the lack thereof. I also came up with some suggestions about how Twitter could improve its revenues.

At the time that I wrote the article, the stock was trading for less than $16 a share. It closed at the end of the day at 16.07.  What’s it trading for now? Currently, the stock is up 3%, so far today, trading at 40.94.

What’s the return if you had bought the stock back on August 2? A very respectable 155%! Not bad for a holding period of less than a year.

The bird is flying!!!

Disclosure: Author owns TWTR.

Why Twitter is a Screaming Buy

Twitter (TWTR) took a huge dump a few days ago on July 27 when it reported earnings, and by the end of the day, the stock dropped by around 14% from the previous day’s close. A couple weeks ago, it had been trading over $20 a share, and now it is less than $16 a share, at the time I am writing this.

The company reported negative earnings, as usual, so why is it a screaming buy? Let’s start off with the company’s biggest asset, President Donald Trump. Yes, Trump provides an advantage to Twitter that no other company has. He tweets almost every single day, and on many days, he tweets multiple times a day. No other president, or for that matter, no other head of state, has ever tweeted so much in the history of mankind. (You know what I mean.) Trump doesn’t use Facebook, he doesn’t use LinkedIn, he doesn’t use Snapchat, he doesn’t use Instagram, he doesn’t use any of the other social media platforms, he doesn’t even send out mass emails. He uses Twitter.

Trump is Twitter’s Biggest Asset

So, the President of the United States is providing free advertising for the company. Imagine the free advertising that Blue Apron would get if Trump ordered from them every day (and told everyone about it).

One of these days, someone is going to figure out how to monetize this unique feature. It may or may not be Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO. It may or may not be Anthony Noto, Twitter’s COO. Or it may be someone new that the company brings in. But someone is going to do it.

Earnings?

But what about earnings? Yes, Twitter hasn’t been generating a profit. But look at Facebook (FB). The company lost $56 million back in 2008, and finally turned it around in 2009 with net income of $229 million. Everyone complains about Amazon (AMZN) not making any money. It lost $278 million in 2014 then showed a profit of $618 million the following year. LinkedIn generated losses in 2010 and 2011, then went profitable in 2012.

Here’s the thing about earnings. When you have income, you have to pay taxes. Once that money is paid out to the IRS, it is dead money; it is money that doesn’t benefit the company. However, applying excess cash flow to tax deductible expenditures, such as more employees, buildings, equipment, machinery, research and development, marketing, and advertising, will benefit the company. These expenses help the company grow and keep taxes low. As long as revenues keep increasing, it pays off in the end, as it did for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Amazon has an outrageously high price-to-earnings ratio and forward P/E, but look at the growth rate of revenues and earnings. Income for the latest fiscal year spiked 292% over the previous year.)

6 Revenue Increasers

But what can Twitter specifically do to increase revenues and earnings? Here is a list of suggestions.

1. Offer ads that appear by every tweet made by Trump. These ads could appear either above or below the tweet, or both.
2. Offer ads that appear by every major celebrity tweet, especially those with over a million followers.
3. When you check your lists, there should be an ad above or below the lists.
4. In the left hand column, under Trends for You, an ad should be available to advertisers. It would not be intrusive to users who first log on, but would be a great location for advertisers when users scroll down.
5. Aggressively go after major advertisers to pay for promoted tweets (Amazon book of the day, Wal-Mart deal of the day, Priceline travel deal of the day, etc.)
6. Set up a Tweet Bank. There are tweets that I want to save that have interesting links, gifs, or pictures. However, when I look for them after a month or two, they are very hard to find, even if I check my Like list. It would be nice if there was a little Save icon next to the Direct Message icon, where I could save the tweet into my Tweet Bank. (This isn’t really a profit making suggestion, just a user enhancement making idea.)

By the way, this is not a stock recommendation (in spite of what the title of this article says). I never give investment advice. This is just a suggestion for your own research and entertainment.

One of these days, Twitter will turn around. The bird will fly. It’s just a matter of who, what, and when.

Disclosure: Author owns TWTR and AMZN.

Article originally published on WSTNN.com on August 4, 2017.

The Twitter Shareholders Meeting

Me and Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO

The Twitter Annual Meeting was held yesterday at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Market Street. Jack Dorsey, the CEO, spoke about the goals for the company.

Areas covered were:
Improving Timeline
Notifications
Safety, with regard ti transparency, better tools, and deep learning & machine learning

Dorsey talked about three major improvements:

1. Twitter Lite – for Safari or Chrome on mobile devices
   30% faster load times
   Uses less than 1 meg of data
   Looks identical to the app
   Can turn on Data Saver – all images, videos, gifs blurred
   Reduce data usage by 70%
2. Explore tab -brings everything together
   Trends, Moments, Live Events
3. Mute – Safety control
   Notifications -muted words -pause and not see

Anthony Noto, Twitter’s CFO, then spoke. He talked about the Live Streaming Video and expansion into:
Sports
News
Entertainment
ESports

He said that in Q1, there was 800 hours of live video content, over 450 events, with more than 200 premium content partners.

All the shareholder resolutions passed except the one that proposed that Twitter become a user owned company. The proposal said:

“A community-owned Twitter could result in new and reliable revenue streams, since we, as users, could buy in as co-owners, with a stake in the platform’s success. Without the short-term pressure of the stock markets, we can realize Twitter’s potential value, which the current business model has struggled to do for many years. We could set more transparent accountable rules for handling abuse. We could re-open the platform’s data to spur innovation. Overall, we’d all be invested in Twitter’s success and sustainability. Such a conversion could also ensure a fairer return for the company’s existing investors than other options.”

The questions and answers were related to looking into a Twitter Prime type service where some users could pay for a premium service, and utilizing artificial intelligence through machine learning and deep learning for timelines and notifications.

Twitter Annual Shareholder Meeting Was Today

Jack Dorsey, CEO,
Anthony Noto, CFO,
Vijaya Gadde, General Counsel
Twitter (TWTR)

Today, May 25, 2016, the Twitter Annual Meeting was held today at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, California. There was a turnout of about 60 shareholders. At last year's meeting, Jesse Jackson showed up, but he wasn't there for the meeting this year. On the stage were Jack Dorsey, CEO, Anthony Noto, CFO, and Vijaya Gadde, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary.

Jack Dorsey lead off the meeting showing a presentation of various tweets and videos. He also went over the five priorities for the company, including refining core services and safety. He mentioned the live streaming deal with the NFL.

Then Noto went over the financials. The business part of the meeting, run by Gadde,  took about 15 minutes, where Jack Dorsey and Hugh Johnston were elected to the Board of Directors to serve until the 2019 annual meeting. Also, the Name Executive Officer Compensation passed, the appointment of PriceWaterhouseCoopers as the accounting firm passed, and and the approval of the 2016 Equity Incentive Plan passed.

Then the fun part began: the question and answer period. The first shareholder asked how the expense for software engineers is shown on the financial statements (mostly R&D), and how the stock based compensation is shown (R&D).  Noto explained that the company currently doesn't use stock options; it only issues restricted stock.

Twitter Annual Shareholder Meeting

The same shareholder also asked what types of software the programmers use. Dorsey took that question and said that it has been a transition, starting with Ruby, then Java, Objective-C, then Swift. He said that several programming languages are used, and the programmers use whatever they need to get the job done.

The next shareholder came up with three new verified statuses. He had previously recommended three last year, two of which have been verified.

One young woman came up with a couple suggestions. One was having the ability to send money through Twitter. The other was having the ability to buy Twitter stock through Twitter. Dorsey said that they are looking into a money transfer system.

A shareholder asked about what the catalyst is for an increase in the stock price and both Dorsey and Noto emphasized the push for more live streaming in the areas of sports, entertainment, and news and politics.

When asked if they were open to a takeover offer or a partnership, the answer was essentially no.

Finally, the $3.6 billion in cash that the company has came up. Noto said that they have a couple of options: share buybacks and acquisitions. Management is regularly evaluation how the money should be spent.

Disclosure: Author owns TWTR.