Twitter generated $422 million in revenue for the first nine months of the year but the microblogging site’s losses are increasing steadily while its user growth rate is slowing down, according to the company’s updated filing with the United States Security and Exchange Commission.
The company’s mixed-bag third quarter earnings report was revealed Tuesday well ahead of its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) expected in November 15.
For the third quarter of 2013, Twitter made $169 million, which is more than twice the revenue it made in the same quarter for 2012. Documents filed with the SEC also indicate that 70 per cent of Twitters revenue comes from mobile ads which are up from 65 per cent in June.
The numbers tend to indicate that Twitter is un a better position to monetize its mobile program than fellow social networking site Facebook was at the time of its own IPO, according to a report from technology news publication Mashable.com.
However the documents also show that Twitter’s loses are growing. The company’s net loss for the first nine months of 2013 was $133.9 million up by 89 per cent from the same period last year.
Operating expenses have also risen to nearly $500 million through last month compared to $394 million in 2012.
Twitter had 232 million monthly active users for the third quarter, up from 218 million for the previous quarter and 167 million for the same period in 2012.
However, Twitters user growth rate is slowing. The numbers indicate that active user numbers grew by just 6 per cent from the previous quarter compared to more than 10 per cent last year.