Re:Twitter's sputtering user growth unnerves investors
by minimax on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @07:16PM
(#7187821)
It's not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme requires some element of fraud, yet here you have Twitter's earnings statement and balance sheet right out in the open. There are reasonable people who think investing in a company presently running at a loss but with a potential for generating huge profits is a reasonable thing to do.
Just poking at your numbers a bit, of that 600M in R&D, 379M was from stock based compensation that hit them in the 4th quarter because of the IPO (they had to expense the RSUs at that point). Don't you think it's a little strange that $400M of the $600M in R&D costs were accrued in the 4th quarter?
I'm not advocating buying Twitter stock. Just trying to counter some of the overzealous cynicism in this thread.
Re:Twitter's sputtering user growth unnerves investors
by steffan on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @06:25PM
(#7187570)
Your numbers are fine, but I wish I could downvote you for the passive-aggressive “...please down vote me for citing these numbers.”
[deleted]
Re:Twitter's sputtering user growth unnerves investors
by boomzilla on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @06:34PM
(#7187616)
Alright, let's try again (from the same balance sheet):
Year 2012: revenue 316M, cost & expenses: 394M
Year 2013: revenue 664M, cost & expenses: 1300M
year over year, revenue increases 2 folds, cost increases more than 3 times. Does that answer your question? You could also break it down by quarters, but the same trend is still there.
1) 266M on content acquisition 2) 600M on R & D 3) 312M on on sales and marketing 4) 123M on general administration
If this is not a Ponzi scheme, I don't know what is.
Oh, by the way, please down vote me for citing these numbers.