Twitter stops bleeding money

After 12 years of operations, Twitter finally posted its first profit.

The social microblogging platform delivered net income of US$91mn in the last quarter of 2017, compared to US$167mn in losses in 4Q16.

Twitter reported Q4 revenues of US$732mn, up 2% year-over-year, although it failed to increase the number of its monthly average users (MAU) in a sequential basis, which stood at 330mn, including 262mn outside the US.

Full-year revenue was US$2.4bn, a decrease of 3%, while its net loss narrowed to US$108mn.

"Q4 was a strong finish to the year. We returned to revenue growth, achieved our goal of GAAP profitability, increased our shipping cadence, and reached five consecutive quarters of double digit DAU growth. I'm proud of the steady progress we made in 2017, and confident in our path ahead," CEO Jack Dorsey said in the earnings release.

In a conference call with analysts, CFO Ned Segal said the company was flat in the US and grew in every other region, with particular growth in Japan and in Asia Pacific. There were no specifics on Latin America.

"If you flip over and look at audience and engagement, in 5 of our 10 largest markets we grew double-digits and that demonstrates the breadth of the ongoing improvement in audience and engagement. Things like Twitter Lite, it's still early days growing off of a small base, but that helps us in emerging markets."

Brazil and Mexico are usually within the top 10 or, depending on the metrics, top five countries per number of users in Twitter.

Full Twitter results can be seen here.