How Much $1,000 Invested In Twitter's Early 2020 Pandemic Low Would Be Worth Today

Twitter, Inc. TWTR is among the companies that arguably benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic as people were forced to stay indoors, isolated from each other.

The microblogging platform emerged as a go-to place for live updates on the pandemic situation and also disseminating information.

Pandemic Onset Sends Twitter To A Low: From the lows in April 2017, Twitter shares experienced an uneven recovery.

It was more of a broad consolidation move that culminated in the stock hitting a low of $20.66 in mid-March 2020 — a period when COVID-19 began rearing its ugly head in countries beyond its place of origin.

Thereafter, it was almost a steady rally interrupted by minor pullbacks. After the stock hit a peak of $80.75 Feb. 25, it experienced a correction and bottomed at $49.12 on May 13. Since then, the stock has recovered and is now perched near a long-term resistance around $70.

Pandemic Kickstarts User Growth: Twitter's monetizable daily active user growth was at 192 million at the end of 2020, up 26.32% from 2019.

mDAUs refer to people, organizations or other accounts that logged in or were otherwise authenticated and accessed Twitter on any given day through twitter.com or Twitter applications that are able to show ads.

The metric rose further to 199 million at the end of the first quarter.

Ad engagements during the three months ended December 2020 surged 35% thanks to growth in ad impressions.

The growth slowed to 11% in the March quarter of 2021.

Revenues climbed 7.4% year-over-year to $3.72 billion in 2020. Twitter's revenue growth accelerated to 28.3% in the first quarter, with revenue hitting $1.036 billion, as ad revenue jumped roughly 32% to $898.84 million.

Related Link: Tony Zhang Is Bullish On Twitter

The momentum is expected to continue into the economic reopening.

"We believe brand spend recovered and that direct response continues to show signs of progress," KeyBanc Capital Market analyst Justin Patterson said in a note previewing Twitter's second-quarter results.

The analyst views the second quarter as Twitter's trough growth rate and said he expects reacceleration in the second half.

Twitter has unveiled several products recently, including Spaces, Twitter Blue and Super Follows, and this speaks to a faster pace of execution, he said.

"We believe this is a general sign that the user and advertiser experience is improving," Patterson said.

Reflecting the strong ad spending environment, KeyBanc expects revenues of $4.84 billion for 2021 and $6.01 billion for 2022.

Twitter Stock Outperforms Peers: A $1,000 investment in Twitter at the mid-March 2020 lows of $20.66 would have acquired roughly 48 shares. The investment would have been valued at $3,337.92 at close of trading Wednesday. This represents a 234% gain.

Twitter is up about 28.4% year-to-date compared to a roughly 27% gain each for bigger social media platforms Facebook, Inc. FB and Snap Inc. SNAP.

Twitter is scheduled to report its second-quarter results Thursday after the market close. Analysts, on average, estimate earnings per share of 7 cents on revenues of $1.06 billion.

At last check, Twitter shares were down 0.66% at $69.04.

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