Pre-tax losses more than double at Irish arm of Twitter

Pre-tax losses more than doubled at the Irish arm of social media platform Twitter last year, newly filed accounts show.

The company,whose parent has more than 200 million daily active users, posted a €595 million loss in 2020, up from a €240 million loss a year earlier. It attributed the increase to intellectual property (IP) rights it acquired in 2019, rising impairment charges and additional operating costs.

In 2019, Dublin-based Twitter International Company completed a €7.9 billion purchase from subsidiaries for IP rights to develop and maintain operations in all countries excluding the Americas. Twitter International said it booked an impairment charge of €43 million relating to the sister companies in 2020. However, it also received dividends amounting to €29 million from these units during the year.

As part of a group restructuring, additional share capital of €8.2 billion was issued in 2020 with the proceeds used primarily to settle amounts owing to group undertakings. In tandem with this, the company’s immediate parent became Lorikeet.

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Turnover at Twitter International rose to €1.08 billion from €1.02 billion a year earlier. The company ended 2020 with net assets of €7.65 billion and cash equivalents of €62 million.

Headcount rose to 234 from 196 with staff costs, including wages and salaries, increasing to €31.8 million from €25.2 million in the prior year.

An interim dividend of €29 million was paid in September 2020, amounting to €209 per share.

Twitter last week announced third quarter revenue of $1.28 billion for the group as a whole, in line with Wall Street targets. However, it missed expectations for user growth.

Monetisable daily active users –the company’s term for users who are served ads – was 211 million during the third quarter, also missing analyst estimates of 212.6 million.