Twitter plummets 18% pre-market after reporting a decline in monthly active users

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Twitter's share price fell as much as 18% in pre-market trading after the company reported a quarter-over-quarter decline in monthly active users.

The company reported its Q2 financials as follows, beating on revenue and with EBITDA in line with estimates:

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• Revenue: $711 million, up 24% year on year
• EBITDA: $265 million, up from $178 million last year
• MAU: 335 million, down from 336 million in Q1, but up from 326 million in Q2 2017.

Twitter blamed the active user decline on new European privacy rules and its decision not to move to paid SMS carrier relationships, and on its efforts to clean up the platform.

Twitter's EBITDA guidance for the third quarter is between $215 million and $235 million.

Chief executive Jack Dorsey said: "Our second quarter results reflect the work we're doing to ensure more people get value from Twitter every day.

"We want people to feel safe freely expressing themselves and have launched new tools to address problem behaviors that distort and distract from the public conversation. We're also continuing to make it easier for people to find and follow breaking news and events, and have introduced machine learning algorithms that organize the conversation around events, beginning with the World Cup. These efforts contributed to healthy year-over-year daily active usage growth of 11 percent and demonstrate why we're investing in the long-term health of Twitter."

This is a developing story...