Dick Costolo Says Needs To Show Wall Street It Can Deliver

Twitter Inc TWTR CEO Dick Costolo spoke Thursday at the Re/code annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Costolo acknowledged the company still needed to demonstrate the financial viability of its strategy, according to Re/code’s Kurt Wagner.

“People believe the strategy,” Costolo said. “They buy it. But we have to show that, ‘It’s great you reached a billion people on and off your site — help me understand how you’re going to monetize that. Show me how you’re going to monetize that.’ Those are things we know and we need to show them how we do it.”

Costolo added that Twitter had “every intention of being an independent [public] company. Those things you read about in the press are simply rumors, not facts,” when it came to speculation the company was shopping for a buyer.

The report noted the company had been dealing with growth issues over the past year to be followed by a disappointing financial report in April which triggered reports that the company would need to be sold.

Costolo made it clear, however, that a sale was not part of the plan, rather, the company wanted to build its audience “by showing tweets to people outside of Twitter, on TV or other platforms like Flipboard,” according to the report.

One way Twitter planned to build the audience was through services such as the live-streaming Periscope technology, which Twitter acquired in January and has already proven to be disruptive to the established copyright laws.

“The technology is still fairly new — new enough that broadcasters and sports leagues are still trying to determine how to handle scenarios like the one that took place earlier this month when Periscope users broadcasted the pay-per-view boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao,” Wagner wrote.

Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour noted, however, that the service was growing and people were watching, in aggregate, 10 years worth of video content each day.

Twitter Inc closed at $36.86 Thursday, up 1.24 percent.