Gordon Deegan
Revenues at Twitter’s Dublin base last year topped almost €2m a day as the company’s pre-tax profits increased marginally to €12.16m.
The social media giant has been based in Ireland since 2011 and new accounts offer the first insight into the revenue generating power of the firm’s Irish base and its international subsidiaries.
The Irish registered Twitter International Company has unlimited status where it is not required to file annual accounts.
However, the firm has this year opted to file full accounts for the first time to the Companies Office for 2017 showing that revenues broke through the €700m barrier last year.
Revenues increased by 6.6% going from €664.8m to €708.49m - or €1.94m a day - with the revenues at the Irish operation accounting for one-third of Twitter’s global $2.44bn revenues in 2017.
The company’s enjoyed relatively modest profits due to the high cost of sales of €567.42m and administrative expenses of €129.42m.
The company’s corporate tax bill totalled €3.9m for last year resulting in post tax profits of €8.22m
Globally, Twitter announced a cost-cutting plan in 2016 and numbers employed at the Dublin unit last year decreased from 202 to 175 with 84 in sales and marketing, 75 in general and administrative and 16 in research and development.
The turnaround at the social platform resulted in Twitter globally recording its first quarterly profit at the end of 2017.
The amount of revenues that the business generates from its Irish users is not disclosed - here, singer Niall Horan has the highest number of any Irish person at 39.4m followers with Conor McGregor and Rory McIlroy also enjoying millions or followers.
Today, Twitter worldwide has 335m monthly active users with the firm appearing daily in the news through the latest tweets from President Donald Trump and other politicians, sports stars, movie stars and pop stars.
The Twitter business here generates its revenues by having in place an arm’s length operating licence agreement with group company to develop a real-time information service for users and advertisers in all countries worldwide apart from the US and Brazil.
The directors state that the company has performed in line with expectations.
The company generates substantially all of its advertising revenues through the sale of promoted products, tweets, accounts and trends.
On the company’s future developments, the directors stated that in 2018, they remain focused on making Twitter easier to use as well as making it easier to tweet and discover content.
Twitter has come under fire for not doing enough to police abusive tweets and the directors state: “We are committed to making Twitter safer and we are clarifying our policies, improving our enforcement and communicating more clearly.
They state: “We believe that our revenue priorities are leading to improvements to our core ad offerings through better performance and measurement, tapping into new channels of demand, introducing new ways to buy ads on Twitter and continuing to grow data and enterprise solutions revenue through our new product and channel segmented go to market approach.
Staff costs last year totalled €14.76m and included equity-settled share-based payments of €3.39m.
Pay to directors increased from €154,000 to €158,000.
Shareholder funds at the firm at the end of last year totalled €266.18m that included €22.79m in accumulated profits.
The company’s cash pile last year reduced from €79.87m to €71.9m.
The profit takes account of foreign exchange losses of €15m and non-cash depreciation of €2.19m.
The company’s operating lease costs increased from €3.5m to €5.25m.
The subsidiaries of Twitter International Company include Twitter firms based in the UK, France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Australia, Italy, Mexico and Asia Pacific.
