Twitter: US Elections didn’t help enough earnings

Twitter on Thursday beat analysts' expectations for earnings per share in its fourth quarter before the opening bell, but missed revenue estimates, prompting a steep fall in its stock price in pre-market trading.

The San Francisco-based company, led by CEO Jack Dorsey, reported adjusted earnings of 16 cents per share on revenue of $717 million, up from a year-earlier $710.5 million.

The social media website expects between $75 million and $95 million in adjusted earnings this quarter before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. That's a far cry from the $191 million that Wall Street had been expecting, according to a survey of industry analysts by FactSet, and investors scrambled to get out of the way of the falling stock even before markets opened.

At the same time, Dorsey said Trump's personal use of Twitter was not driving growth in active engagement. "We don't see a benefit to the top of the funnel from all of the activity during the election period," he said, recalling the latest financial quarter when Twitter partnered with Bloomberg, BuzzFeed News and PBS Newshour to offer live coverage of the 2016 election debates, election night and the inauguration.

Donald Trump has used Twitter like no other world leader, firing out broadsides and accolades in rapid succession, generating headline after headline with 130-word missives

"2016 was a transformative year as we reset and focused on why people use Twitter: it's the fastest way to see what's happening and what everyone's talking about," said Dorsey, who rejoined the company in late 2015 with hopes of reviving it.

This week, the company announced three additional measures to control rogue users, including identifying past abusers and banning them from using new Twitter handles.

Advertising revenue fell slightly to $638 million in the fourth quarter, and the company said tough competition and Twitter's push to re-evaluate its product portfolio could affect future revenue growth.

Live video is another selling point that Twitter is trying to drive home because of the potential ad dollars. The company says it streamed more than 600 hours of live premium video from sports, news and entertainment events during the quarter, drawing 31 million unique visitors.

Twitter warned its revenue growth would continue to fall behind its audience growth "due to the sales cycle" and said it could also be negatively affected by the "escalating competition for digital advertising spending." Some of that new competition for digital ad dollars is most likely coming from its rival Snapchat, which released filing for its initial public offering last week.