Twitter Concludes Search For CFO, Appoints Ned Segal

Twitter Inc TWTR has finally zeroed in on a name for the post of chief financial officer. Ex-Goldman Sachs GS executive, Ned D. Segal, will be assuming the CFO responsibilities of the company from late August.

Per a regulatory filing, Segal's annual salary will be $500,000. He will also be entitled to a signing bonus of $300,000. Apart from that, he will be getting 1.2 million shares of Twitter stock vesting over four years.

Since the departure of Adam Bain in November last year, the CFO responsibilities have been carried out by Anthony Noto, the chief operating officer of the company.

Per Twitter, Segal has 20 years of experience in finance and capital markets. Apart from Goldman Sachs, he has served as the Senior Vice President of Finance for the Small Business Group at Intuit. Prior to that, he served as the CFO of RPX Corporation, a public patent risk management solutions company.

Regarding the appointment, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey said "Ned's experience in financial operations as a public company and business unit CFO, along with his background serving technology companies and investors, are an ideal fit for Twitter as we work to extend our positive momentum, continue growing our audience and achieve greater operating efficiency. He brings a principled, engaging and rigorous approach to the CFO role, with a track record of driving profitable growth."

Twitter, Inc. Price

Twitter, Inc. Price | Twitter, Inc. Quote

For some time now, Twitter has been plagued by sluggish user growth, declining revenue growth rate, profitability issues, exodus of top level employees and trolling menace. These have caused bloodbath on the company's trading front. Also, increasing costs and stiff competition from Facebook FB and Alphabet GOOGL for ad dollars continue to be overhangs.

However, since its last earnings report in April, things are seemingly starting to look up for Twitter. The company has managed to record a relatively impressive monthly average users (MAUs) growth in the last reported quarter, with a jump of 2.8% sequentially. Moreover, MAUs increased 6% year over year. Meanwhile, daily average users (DAUs) were up 14%. 

We note that Twitter has vastly outperformed the Zacks Internet Software industry in the last three months. While the stock returned 30.4%, the industry gained 13.3%.

Focus on live has paid off for Twitter. The company is trying to bring more video content to attract ad dollars, which contribute to the lion's share of Twitter's total revenue. It intends to capture the opportunity presented by the ever increasing video viewing on social media platforms.

Currently, Twitter carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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