Twitter Loses $9.8 Billion in Market Value as Stock Tumbles 25 Percent

That's not the sky you see falling on Wall Street, just Twitter's stock price. Investors hit the panic button after Twitter reported its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2013 financial results. Twitter's revenue in the fourth quarter was $243 million, up 116 percent year-over-year, though it's the user growth that spooked investors into selling off their stock.

The microblogging service averaged 241 million users in the fourth quarter of 2013, an increase of just 3.8 percent sequentially. It's the lowest quarter-on-quarter growth rate since the company began disclosing such data, Reuters reports.

Twitter Wall Street
Image Source: Flickr (Anthony Quintano)

As a result, shares of Twitters dropped 25 percent, hammering the company's market value to the tune of $9.8 billion. As the day goes on, investment brokers appear split on whether to give Twitter a buy or sell rating. Even though user adoption didn't exactly balloon in Q4, revenue was higher than expected.

"Twitter finished a great year with our strongest financial quarter to date," said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. "We are the only platform that is public, real-time, conversational and widely distributed and I'm excited by the number of initiatives we have underway to further build upon the Twitter experience."

Looking ahead, Twitter expects its Q1 2014 revenue to be in the range of $230 million to $240 million, and its full year revenue to be between $1.15 billion and $1.2 billion.