In A Bullish Move, Twitter To Report Earnings Ahead Of Employee Lock-Up Expiration

Following its blockbuster IPO, Twitter soared north of $70 per share, topping out at $74.73. Not bad for a company that priced at $26 per share. Since that late-2013 high, Twitter has retreated, trading today just over the $40 mark. It traded under that threshold last week.

In the face of that slide, and despite a massive share-price correction — read: selloff — following its fourth-quarter earnings, Twitter is scheduled to report its first quarter earnings before May 5, the date when a large number of its shares owned by employees will unlock. Unlocked shares are available for sale on the public markets.

That flood of freshly free equity could lead to a share price depression, as employees hungry for liquidity dump their long-held equity onto the public market. There is a wrinkle, however. If employees are largely convinced that the best days of their employer are ahead, they have a large financial incentive to hang on to those shares.

This makes the timing of Twitter’s decision to release its earnings pre-lockup interesting. It’s a power play of sorts. If Twitter were expecting a poor earnings report, it would want to release it post-lockup, thereby lessening the incentive for employees to cash out on the first day possible. The company wants to avoid its employees selling shares en masse, as that would provide a very negative signal to the investing public.

So Twitter is publicly betting that, by releasing earnings ahead of the lock-up expiration, employee interest in selling their shares will decrease. And you don’t negatively incentivize your denizens against harming your firm.

So log cabins aside, Twitter could be obliquely signaling that it had a big first quarter, or at least one good enough to prevent a mass sell-off of its shares by its workers.

Executives at Twitter indicated today that they intend to hold onto their shares in the company after the lock-up period ends

Twitter is expected to lose $0.03 per share (non-GAAP) on revenue of $240.93 million. In the fourth quarter of 2013, Twitter made $0.02 (non-GAAP) on revenue of $242.7 million, besting analyst expectations on both scores. However, investors soured on its slow user growth.

TechCrunch reached out to Twitter for comment on the timing of its earnings, but did not hear back by the time of publication.

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER Andreas Eldh UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN CROPPED)

Report: NSA Exploited Heartbleed For Years. NSA: No

Update: An account associated with the NSA tweeted out a quick denial: “Statement: NSA was not aware of the recently identified Heartbleed vulnerability until it was made public.” So, either Bloomberg was misled, misunderstood their information, or the NSA is lying. [A caveat: The Twitter account in question is being treated by the larger world as legitimate, but remains unverified by Twitter itself.]

Update 2: See bottom of post for full NSA statement. Source one, two. 

This afternoon Bloomberg reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) knew about the now infamous Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL, and that it used the weakness to collect intelligence.

It is not clear if the NSA used Heartbleed to collect information regarding citizens in the United States, so this issue may not concern privacy like so many other revelations regarding the agency have. Instead, the idea is that the NSA was reportedly aware of the issue, and chose to exploit the exploit rather than helping the larger technology community quickly.

In short, The NSA essentially decided that its own intelligence efforts were more important than the security of your information.

In the ensuing few days since the Heartbleed weakness has been exposed, companies and services large and small have rushed to patch their systems, change their cryptographic protections, and alert their users to change their passwords. This situation could have been ameliorated, if not avoided altogether.

The NSA’s reputation inside of the technology world has been long-suffering, especially in the wake of efforts to weaken encryption by inserting back doors, and its efforts to tap the cables between data centers of large, popular technology firms. This will not help.

Making the average person understand the extent of the NSA’s actions has been difficult — some don’t get, or simply don’t care, about their digital privacy — but to deliberately ignore a known flaw that could put every member of your family at risk? That’s easier to grasp.

Update 2, continued: 

Report: Apple Considers Building An On-Demand Music Service To Take On Spotify

Apple already has iTunes Radio, but it’s hoping to go further in the direction of on-demand music, according to a report in Billboard that cites “three people familiar with the talks” between Apple and music labels.

To be clear, Billboard describes these as “exploratory talks,” so it doesn’t sound like anything is definite. Citing Nielsen SoundScan, the article also points to double-digit declines in iTunes music sales in the United States as big reason for these discussions.

At the risk of stating the obvious, iTunes Radio allows users to listen to a range of Internet radio stations (similar to Pandora), while an on-demand service would allow you to listen to the songs you choose when you choose (similar to Spotify). Apple has been reportedly been developing new mobile ad technology with a focus on iTunes Radio, so a new music service could also be a way to create new ad inventory (though presumably there would be paid component, too).

I’ve emailed Apple for comment. If the company responds (it won’t), I will update this post.

Report: Rumored HTC Nexus tablet may feature 8.9-inch display

Back in February, a report surfaced out of Taiwan that claimed HTC had won a bid to build a new high-end Nexus tablet. Since then, we’ve heard very little else about this rumor, until today.

According to the research firm IHS Technology, Google and HTC are teaming up to create an 8.9-inch “high-performance” Nexus device. IHS’ Rhoda Alexander indicates volume production “is expected to start in July or August. The expectation is [that] this will be a lower volume product, carrying a premium price tag to support the specifications.” Alexander says she is unsure of the pricing that Google is targeting, but wouldn’t be surprised if it arrives with a tag higher than $299.

Google and HTC are reportedly teaming up to create an 8.9-inch high-performance Nexus device

In other words, the HTC Nexus 8.9 would be a high-end alternative that co-exists with the Nexus 7, and perhaps even the Nexus 10. While the latter two tablets are geared more towards everyday consumers, the Nexus 8.9 would be a premium device that climbs further upmarket — sort of like what Samsung is trying to accomplish with the Galaxy Pro series.

So would such a move actually make sense? Maybe. While some folks are perfectly happy with the plastic (yet still high quality) builds of devices like the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10, an aluminum body tablet with boomsound speakers certainly sounds like a nice alternative for those looking for something a bit more ‘premium’ looking.

On the other hand, IHS doesn’t specify where it is getting this information from, and might simply be building on existing rumors we’ve heard from publications like Focus Taiwan. Bottom-line, we’d take the whole rumor with a grain of salt for now.

What do you think, would you like the idea of a higher-end HTC tablet with an 8.9-inch display? Would you willing to pay premium pricing for such an offering?

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