Twitter posts stronger-than-expected 2nd-quarter results, stock flies high

Stronger-than-expected results pushed Twitter's stock sharply higher on Tuesday after the short messaging service said its revenue more than doubled in the second quarter.

The San Francisco-based company's stock jumped 29.6 percent to $50.01 in extended trading after the results came out.

Twitter posted a net loss of $144.6 million, or 24 cents per share, in the April-June period. That compares with a loss of $42.2 million, or 32 cents per share, a year earlier when Twitter was still a private company.

Adjusted earnings were 2 cents per share in the latest quarter, beating analysts' expectations of a loss of 1 cent, according to FactSet.

Revenue was $312.2 million, up from $139.3 million.

Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting revenue of $283.3 million.

Average monthly users were 271 million as of the end of June, up 24 percent from a year earlier and up 6 percent from the end of March.

Mobile advertising revenue was $224 million, or 81 percent of the quarter's total ad revenue. In the first quarter, mobile ad revenue amounted to about 80 percent of total ad revenue.

Twitter went public last November, setting a price of $26 per share for its stock, which then soared amid hungry investor demand. The stock peaked in December at $74.73 and then declined sharply.