[dismal2]

> “It calls into question why they didn’t see this coming,” said Victor Anthony, an analyst at Axiom Capital Management, who has a buy rating on Twitter’s stock. “I don’t think anyone ever questioned their ability to generate revenues.”

Hmm, I thought everybody did? I guess wall street really does have a clear view of this whole tech scene.

[austenallred]

>Twitter cut full-year revenue guidance to $2.17 billion to $2.27 billion, from the previous range of $2.3 billion to $2.35 billion.

I still don't question Twitter's ability to generate revenue, because they will generate over $2 Billion this year. I question their ability to meet Analyst expectations, sure, but they already have revenue. Billions of dollars of it.

They beat their earnings estimate by 57% and missed their revenue estimate by 4.7%. This is by no means the definitive death knell so many people on HN are making it out to be. Wall Street is a crazy place and expectations were sky high and yes the stock dropped a lot, but Twitter will survive and is doing just fine.

It seems like HN is convinced the company is eternally doomed and will never make money. That notion has been pretty much proven false. Twitter makes money; they're just behind where people thought they would be.

[coldcode]

Twitter is incapable of ever meeting the Price-Sales multiple of 20X+ until the stock drops closer to reality. The average stock is less than 2X. Apple is around 3X and has never in it's history been greater than 7X. What can Twitter do to multiply their sales by 5X? It's great they make some money but the stock price is unrealistic.

[erikpukinskis]

Apple is a bad comparison because the near-death-experience in the 90s combined with its contrarian attitude has put it in on a very short leash with Wall Street. I mean, aside from its years in the desert Apple has performed as well and as consistently as any tech company over long stretches. And yet it's P/E is consistently a third of Google's or Sony's.

And it literally won the war. They take the lions share of profits in the personal computer market and they have a huge moat. You could argue they will be in trouble when personal computing devices stop changing so quickly and are fully commodified, but I can't imagine that's within the next two decades. Honestly I find it weird their P/E isn't higher.

[snowwrestler]

Twitter is just now figuring out what business they are really in: content distribution. They thought they were a social network, but social networking is just how they source their talent and content.

Their homepage redesign, which just launched, is the first step toward what could be huge growth. Evaluation of the company will shift from active users to passive audience. Twitter ads can reach them both just fine, and there are way more passive watchers than tweeters.

[serve_yay]

> Victor Anthony, an analyst at Axiom Capital Management, who has a buy rating on Twitter’s stock

What's that quote about getting someone to understand something that their job depends on them not understanding?

[EC1]

I googled your exact question and got this:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

[danieltillett]

I think the OP was asking a rhetorical question.

[Jare]

They have been able to generate revenue for a while. I found this writeup a very interesting read: https://medium.com/backchannel/how-twitter-found-its-money-m...

[DonHopkins]

I love how "I don't think anyone ever questioned" can mean two different things: either everyone assumed they could make money, or nobody ever even bothered to ask the question if could they make money, let alone knows the answer.