Twitter Shares Climb On Subscription Service Speculation

Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) climbed over 7% Wednesday on speculation that the San Francisco-based company plans to launch a subscription service. The social media giant posted a job advert for an engineers to work on a subscription platform. “We are building a subscription platform, one that can be reused by other teams in the future,” the listing stated, per The Verge. The new web engineers will work on the company’s Gryphon team, which collaborates closely with the payroll team and the Twitter.com group.

According to Bloomberg, a person familiar with the matter said the company is exploring alternative revenue sources. The social media firm currently generates about 85% of its revenue from advertising. Therefore, a subscription service would help diversify the top line as businesses rein in their marketing budgets amid ongoing uncertainty. Despite Twitter adding 14 million new users in the first quarter, its revenues rose just 3% from the March 2019 quarter, the smallest increase in over two years.

Through July 8, Twitter stock is up 10.48% year to date, with the shares surging 27% in the past three months alone. The company looks fully priced from a valuation front, given it trades 52% above its five-year forward earnings multiple.

Wall Street View

Rosenblatt Securities analyst Mark Zgutowicz outlined to clients what a Twitter subscription service may look like. For instance, he believes the firm would be more likely to launch an offering utilizing its data and analytics, rather than moving to paid tiers for Twitter usage.

Sentiment among analysts skews toward a bullish outlook, with 24 ‘Hold’ ratings and nine ‘Buy’ ratings. Only four research gurus recommend selling Twitter stock. Furthermore, look for a string of analyst upgrades if the company does indeed announce a subscription service. Wall Street has a 12-month consensus price target of $33.14 – indicating 6% downside from Wednesday’s $35.41 close.

Technical Outlook

Twitter shares have formed a loosely constructed inverse head and shoulders pattern over the past nine months. The price tested the formation’s neckline in Wednesday’s trading session on the highest volume in nearly two years. Also, a likely cross of the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) above the 200-day SMA early next week adds to the bullish technical landscape. A clean breakout above $37 could see buyers run the stock up to around $46, where price encounters resistance from the 52-week high. Alternatively, a failure to push through this closely-watched resistance level could trigger a fall to horizontal trendline support at $28.5.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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