What Twitter, Inc. (TWTR, Financial) giveth – Twitter taketh away. After reporting strong December quarter results and an upbeat outlook, shares jumped 39.6% during the first quarter. Well… it turned out the upbeat outlook was a bit premature, as slower user growth and management’s apparent inability to execute on what most investors perceived as fairly low hanging fruit resulted in a loss of momentum, confidence and a 27.7% decline in the price of the stock. In last quarter’s letter, we commented that in our view, the probability of Twitter’s eventual success (or failure) was neither higher nor lower as a result of one good quarterly result. We feel similarly today, although we have to acknowledge that the ouster of the company’s CEO and the resulting management turmoil make a quick turnaround unlikely. Having said that, we continue to believe that Twitter is a unique and valuable communications platform for all major events unfolding live, in real time, around the world. It is still in the early stages of monetization and evolution as a platform, and we believe they will figure it out.
From Baron Funds' second quarter 2015 commentary.
