Twitter Cancels Earnings Call, Citing Pending $44B Musk Deal

The social mead company also revealed a 2019 error that led it to report inflated active user figures.

By Stacy Elliott

Elon Musk and Twitter.

Twitter released its first-quarter earnings this morning, reporting $1.2 billion in revenue, up 16% compared to last year and just shy of its estimated $1.23 billion.

But at 8 am EST, when the earnings call was meant to begin, the company revealed in a press release that the call, shareholder letter, and financial guidance that usually accompany the announcement had all been canceled.

“In light of the proposed transaction with [Tesla CEO Elon Musk], as is customary during the pendency of an acquisition, Twitter will not be hosting a conference call,” the company wrote in the release, going on to say that further details on the past quarter will be available in its 10-Q filing with the SEC.

The quarterly report had not yet been filed with the regulator as of this writing.

Twitter said it expects the deal with Musk, who has agreed to acquire the company for $44 billion, to close before the end of the year. 

Inflated user figures

In its earnings report, Twitter also revealed that an error with a feature released in 2019, allowing users to link multiple accounts, led it to report monetizable daily active user (mDAU) numbers inflated by as much as 1.9 million.

Case in point: Twitter previously reported 216.6 daily active users in Q4'21 but has revised that number to 214.7.

“An error was made at that time, such that actions taken via the primary account resulted in all linked accounts being counted as mDAU,” Twitter said in the release. “This resulted in an overstatement of mDAU from Q1’19 through Q4’21.”

Although the issue traces back to the first quarter of 2019, Twitter only provided revised figures for Q4 2020, citing its data retention policy. 

“Our estimates suggest the prior period adjustments are not likely to be greater than those in Q4’20,” Twitter wrote.

Musk’s plans for Twitter

Although it involves the CEO of an electric vehicle company buying a social media company, the deal has generated a lot of buzz and speculation in the crypto community.

Musk has repeatedly said that he believes Twitter should be more transparent.

“The code should be on GitHub so it can be examined,” he said during an interview at TED2022 in Vancouver, Canada. “I just think it’s important to the function of democracy in the United States and other countries. The civilizational risk is decreased if we can increase the trust in Twitter as a public platform.”

Musk has also said that he thinks the process of deciding who does and doesn’t get censored on Twitter should be decentralized, an ethos that has resonated with the crypto community. 

Since the deal was announced, it’s been applauded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, brothers and co-founders of the crypto exchange Gemini Trust Company. 

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has shared his thoughts on what an on-chain version of Twitter could look like. 

And MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, a tireless fan of Bitcoin, also offered his congratulations.