Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, February 11, 2016

• Twitter User Growth Comes to a Halt - Stock Down After Quarterly Earnings: On Wednesday, after many quarters of slowing user growth, Twitter said its monthly visitors in the fourth quarter totaled 320 million — exactly the same as the company reported in the previous quarter. While the number was up 9 percent from a year ago, when monthly active users stood at 288 million, the figures showed that Mr. Dorsey’s recent moves have made little impact in attracting users. The user figures overshadowed otherwise positive fourth-quarter earnings results. Twitter reported revenue of $710 million, up 48 percent from $479 million a year ago. Net loss narrowed to $90.2 million, or 13 cents a share, from a loss of $125 million, or 20 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. But Twitter’s outlook was lower than projected by Wall Street. The company estimated revenue of $595 million to $610 million in the current quarter, compared with Wall Street expectations of $628 million. Shares of Twitter have been pummeled in the last year, dropping around 67 percent. The stock declined in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

• Facebook Disavows Marc Andreessen Comments on India, and He Apologizes:  Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and board member of the social network Facebook, has long been one of its vocal supporters. On Wednesday, Facebook did not welcome that support. Hundreds of users, many of whom said they were of Indian descent, reacted negatively to Mr. Andreessen’s comment and what appeared to be his pro-colonialist sentiment. The tweet has since been deleted. Facebook swiftly swatted down Mr. Andreessen’s comments on Wednesday. “We strongly reject the sentiments expressed by Marc Andreessen last night regarding India,” Facebook said in a statement. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, also posted on the social network that he found Mr. Andreessen’s comments “deeply upsetting, and they do not represent the way Facebook or I think at all.” He added that through his travels to India, he has “gained a deeper appreciation for the need to understand India’s history and culture.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Andreessen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Wednesday morning, Mr. Andreessen posted new tweets in which he apologized for his previous comments, an apology he later repeated. “I now withdraw from all future discussions of Indian economics and politics, and leave them to people with more knowledge and experience!” he wrote.

• Tesla expects to become profitable in 2016, shares surge: Tesla Motors Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk on Wednesday promised investors that the electric luxury car maker will start making money this year, sending the company's shares up sharply despite a wider fourth-quarter loss.Tesla shares rose more than 10 percent in after-hours trading after the company forecast a 60 to 80 percent increase in vehicle sales this year and promised it would turn a profit on an adjusted basis. It will start generating positive cash flow in March. Tesla shares are still down more than 30 percent since the beginning of the year, reflecting investor concerns about continued losses. Tesla’s cash reserves dropped to $1.2 billion as of Dec. 31 from $1.9 billion a year earlier, despite a sale of shares last summer. The company’s cash burn has become a concern for some analysts, given the heavy capital spending it has mapped out. The slower-than-planned launch of the company's Model X sport utility vehicle during the last quarter added $67 million in unplanned costs, Tesla said. Tesla shares rose despite a wider fourth-quarter net loss of $2.44 a share, compared with a loss of 86 cents a share a year earlier. Tesla reported an adjusted loss of 87 cents per share in the fourth quarter, while analysts expected a profit of 10 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Deliveries of Model S sedans and Model X SUVs were 17,478 vehicles in the quarter, at the low end of prior forecasts. Revenue rose nearly 27 percent to a $1.21 billion.

• Cisco beats profit estimates, adds $15 billion to buyback: Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by higher demand for its routers and security products, and added $15 billion to its share buyback program. The company's shares rose 5.1 percent in after-market trading on Wednesday. The results were a bright sign for investors after several tech stocks with lofty valuations plunged in the past few days due to disappointing sales outlooks from LinkedIn Corp and Tableau Software. Cisco is shifting to high-end switches and routers and investing in new products such as data analytics software and cloud-based tools for data centers. Revenue in the company's routers business rose 5 percent to $1.85 billion in the second quarter ended Jan. 23, Cisco said. Revenue in the switches business, the company's biggest, fell 4 percent to $3.48 billion. Its security business, which offers firewall protection as well as intrusion detection and prevention systems, recorded an 11 percent rise in revenue to $462 million. Cisco boosted its current share buyback plan of $97 billion, of which $16.9 billion was remaining, by $15 billion.

• Amazon to buy back $5 billion of shares: Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), the world's largest e-commerce company, said on Wednesday its board authorized a $5 billion share buyback program. The buyback replaces the $2 billion repurchase program approved in 2010. The company had $763 million remaining under the previous plan. The company's shares rose 1.5 percent to $498 in after-hours trading.

• More Top-level churn at Flipkart: Mukesh Bansal, head of marketplace and a board member at Flipkart, and chief business officer Ankit Nagori have decided to leave the e-commerce firm barely a month after a top-level reshuffle that led to a change in the roles of the company’s two founders. Separately, Flipkart announced that Nagori was also quitting the company. He had joined Flipkart about six years ago and quickly rose through the ranks. Mukesh Bansal didn’t specify a date by when he would leave the company but said he would continue to be available from outside as a mentor to the team. Mukesh had joined Flipkart nearly two years ago after the e-commerce firm acquired the online apparel retailer that he had founded, Myntra. Nagori, on the other hand, plans to start his own sports venture. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal will back his new venture, said a post on Flipkart’s website.