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Twitter Lost $221 Million in 2021

Twitter sigue en números rojos: perdió $221 millones en el 2021

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Twitter announced Thursday a net loss for its entire fiscal year 2021 of 221 million dollars. Despite still remaining in the red, this is a significant improvement for the company’s accounts, which last year had lost five times more money.

Between January and December last year, the San Francisco firm earned $5.077 billion, up 37% from $3.716 billion in 2020, mainly from its online advertising business.

Almost all of this revenue, over 90%, comes from the sale of advertising space on the social network, while the remaining 10% is earned by selling data to third parties. 

Twitter shareholders, meanwhile, lost 28 cents per share last year, compared with a loss of $1.44 in 2020.

The company headed by Parag Agrawal currently has 217 million active daily users, i.e. those who connect to the social network at least once a day, up from 192 million at the end of 2020. 

Of the total 217 million, 38 million are in the United States.

The social network firm predicted an increase in revenue of between 20 and 25% for 2022. 

The firm took advantage of the presentation of results to announce a share buyback program worth 4,000 million dollars, 2,000 million of which will occur in the short term and the rest, later.

Thursday’s accounts reflect, among other things, the bet launched by Twitter in September, consisting of the creation of the “Communities” function, a space dedicated to people who share the same interest, in the style of the popular groups of its competitors Facebook and Reddit.

The “Communities” include interests such as “Dogs”, “Astrology”, “Skin Care” and “Sneakers”.

Last year was also the year of the major restructuring at the head of the company as Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of the company he co-founded in 2006 to “free” it from the influence of its founders after years of tension with its investors and questions about freedom of expression on the platform.

To replace the historic Dorsey and give the company a new direction, the board unanimously chose the man who had been chief technology officer for the past three years, Parag Agrawal.

A 37-year-old Indian national, Agrawal arrived at Twitter in 2011, when the firm had about 1,000 employees, and was promoted four years ago to chief technology officer, a position he held until being named CEO.

Previously, he worked at Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T in research positions.

A few days after taking office, the new CEO announced several changes to Twitter’s leadership and organization in order to achieve “faster execution” and greater “operational rigor.”

One of the main consequences of that restructuring was the departure at the end of 2021 of, until then, two top Twitter executives, the head of engineering, Michael Montano, and the director of design, Dantley Davis.

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