What Are The Biggest Risks That Twitter Faces?

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Trefis
TWTR: Twitter logo
TWTR
Twitter

Our current price estimate for Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) stands at $26, which is a discount of about 35% to 40% to the market. Unlike the market price, our estimate is based on a diluted share count of approximately 666 million for Twitter, which includes restricted stock units and outstanding stock options. Nevertheless, we believe that the significant discount implies that the market is overlooking certain risks inherent in Twitter’s business. The company is not profitable yet, and isn’t expected to be so for the next couple of years. In addition, the limited functionality, competition from other platforms, and the possibility of ad monetization peaking, are some factors that can slow down growth in the future. As the overall revenue growth moderates, margins will be impacted too. Let’s take a look at these risks in detail.

See our complete analysis for Twitter

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User Base Growth Suffers Due To Limited Functionality & Competition From Other Platforms

Twitter’s average monthly active users stood at 160 million in 2012. [1] We expect this figure to grow to 226 million for 2013, and reach past 600 million globally over the next nine years. Most of this growth will be driven by: 1) growing smartphone penetration; 2) Twitter’s compelling value proposition to users and marketers; and, 3) its integration with third-party sites resulting in wide distribution and visibility. However, there could be downside of about 20% to our price estimate if this figure was to reach just 450 million during the same time frame. This downside scenario is based on the assumption that the U.S. active user base will reach 95 million with international markets contributing another 355 million. Competition from Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), LinkedIn (NASDAQ:LNKD) and other platforms, as well as the platform’s limited features, could hamper Twitter’s active user base growth.

Twitter competes with other social networking platforms and chat applications for user engagement. These competitors include, but are not limited to, Facebook, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and LinkedIn. Among these, Facebook and LinkedIn have registered strong growth in terms of user base and user engagement. Twitter’s usage can be adversely affected if Facebook or other Internet companies become the preferred choice for sharing content and following news and celebrities. Additionally, while Twitter’s simple design can be its unique selling proposition, it can also act as a roadblock in its growth. Compared to Twitter’s limited features, Facebook offers much more flexibility and variety in content sharing. Twitter has a 140-character limit for its tweets and is public in nature, thus limiting the amount and type of content that users can share.

Twitter Gets Banned In Certain Countries

We have previously stated that one of the catalysts for Twitter’s growth is its potential role in shaping political and economic systems of emerging nations. It can be a powerful tool for sharing thoughts and opinions among political leaders and general masses, as well as creating greater awareness for information transparency. However, this is a double edged sword and could potentially encourage governments to block certain Twitter accounts, or completely block the service. Governments may take this as a precautionary step, both to prevent the spread of hate speech and to curb potential uprisings. We have seen this happen in Egypt and Iran in recent years. In China, Twitter is completely blocked.

Ad Monetization Hits A Ceiling

Twitter plans to increase the size of its sales and marketing support teams and extend its self-serve advertising platform to countries other than the U.S. We believe that these efforts will help the company sell more of its ad inventory over time, which will support growth in its monetization levels in the international segment. We currently forecast Twitter’s international ad revenue per 1000 timeline views to increase from $0.17 in 2012 to $1.54 in less than a decade. We also forecast the same figure for the U.S. to grow past $5.00 during the same time frame. However, the ad monetization level could hit a ceiling, depending upon the optimal ad density and pricing that Twitter eventually decides upon. This could result in meaningful downside to our price estimate. Facebook recently stated during its Q3 earnings announcement that it is satisfied with the level of ad density on mobile and has no plans of increasing it further. We are currently unaware of what Twitter thinks would be the right balance between user experience and the density of promoted tweets. This poses some risk due to the possibility of the ceiling being hit sooner than we think.

Additionally, the emerging markets of Latin America and Asia are likely to have lower  revenue per 1,000 timeline views compared to developed markets of Europe. This could negatively impact the figure going forward if most of the growth comes from these markets. Competition from Facebook and other platforms could also diminish the growth in ad pricing, putting further pressure on monetization growth.

Marketing Expenses Remain High

While research and development expenses form the biggest cost bucket for Twitter right now, they are likely to be significantly outstripped by sales and marketing expenses over the long run. In order to continue selling ads, amid growing competition and international expansion, Twitter will need a much larger sales force. We currently forecast these expenses as a percentage of revenue to increase for the next couple of years before declining to about 16% in the long term. Our forecast is based on the assumption that Twitter will derive significant operating leverage as it grows its advertising business. However, in a scenario where these expenses stay above 20%, there could be 10% downside to our price estimate.

Our price estimate for Twitter stands at $26, implying a discount of 35% to 40% to the market price.

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Notes:
  1. Twitter’s SEC filings []