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Twitter cuts revenue forecast, shares slump


    (Reuters) - Twitter Inc cut its full-year revenue forecast due to weak demand for its direct response products, sending its shares down as much as 24 percent on Tuesday.

    TWITTER (TWTR.NY)said it expected 2015 revenue of $2.17 billion to$2.27 billion, compared with an earlier forecast of $2.3 billion to $2.35 billion. Analysts on average had been expecting full-year revenue of $2.37 billion.

    The company's direct response products are tweets that businesses can send to targeted users, which can include a clickable business card or a link to drive traffic to the advertiser's website.

    Twitter, which allows users to broadcast 140-character messages, said revenue rose to $436 million in the first quarter from $250.5 million a year earlier. This was below the average analyst expectation of $456.8 million. (http://bit.ly/1GCvh0y)

    The company's monthly active users rose 18 percent to 302 million, in line with analysts' expectations of slowing growth.

    Twitter's net loss widened to $162.4 million, or 25 cents per share, for the quarter ended March 31 from $132.4 million, or 23 cents per share.

    Excluding items, the company earned 7 cents per share.

    Analysts on average had expected Twitter to earn 4 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

    Twitter shares were halted briefly on Tuesday after market data firm Selerity revealed the earnings numbers before Twitter released its statement.

    Twitter shares closed down 18.2 percent at $42.27 on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

    (Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)