How Analysts Rate Twitter Now After the Explosive Earnings Reaction

Source: courtesy of Twitter

This post has been updated below.

The monumental earnings slam by Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) has many investors and market pundits wondering whether they have missed the boat on the hyper-social media player. We were given a heads up ahead of the report that the WhisperNumber.com whisper number was for earnings to come in at breakeven for the second quarter, versus a consensus of -$0.01 per share, but Twitter blew that away. 24/7 Wall St. is looking at the analyst research reports here on Wednesday as firms update their coverage.

The most impressive part, outside of positive adjusted earnings, was that Twitter’s revenue was 10% above expectations, at $312 million, versus estimates of $283 million from Thomson Reuters. One note that is causing some controversy among analysts and investors is that the user growth was not exactly massive. We had projected that it would take 275 million or more in monthly active users, and it came in at 271 million, from 255 million the previous quarter. CNBC put out a consensus of roughly 267 million expected.

Twitter shares closed at $38.59 on Tuesday ahead of earnings, and shares were indicated up just over 25% in early bird trading. That put the stock around $48.65, but shares had hit $50 in the after-hours trading session. We would point out wishy-washy analyst coverage and a wild short interest as key drivers.

We have a partial analyst montage for Twitter upgrades, downgrades and other coverage. These calls for Wednesday were as follows:

• Evercore Partners downgraded it to Sell.
• Pivotal Research downgraded Twitter to Sell from Hold with a $38 price target.
• Cowen raised the rating to Market Perform from underperform with a $45 price target.
• Wunderlich maintained a Hold rating but raised its target to $45.
• UBS raised Twitter to Neutral from Sell.
• RBC Capital Markets maintained its Buy rating and raised its target to $65.
• Goldman Sachs reiterated its Buy rating and raised its price target to $63.
• Merrill Lynch raised its rating to Buy from Neutral with a $60 price target.

NEW UPDATED ANALYST COVERAGE IN MORE DETAIL

Here is our own May 20 synopsis on why Twitter shares may have bottomed out.

Investors and traders cannot ignore the short interest in Twitter. As of July 15, that short interest was 33.86 million shares. That is massive short interest, but it is far from the peak when the short interest went to 50 million shares as of the end of April.

Those analyst calls will be updated as more calls are seen throughout the morning. Stay tuned.

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