Nasdaq apologises for early release of Twitter results

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32523184

Version 0 of 1.

The Nasdaq stock market has said its "regrets" an "operational error" which led to Twitter's results being released early on Tuesday.

"The posting was caused by an operational issue that exposed the release on Twitter's IR [investor relations] website for approximately 45 seconds," a statement said.

During that time a website picked them up and tweeted them.

US markets were still trading and Twitter's shares tumbled 18%.

Usually, US firms report their earnings before or after markets are operational to avoid huge fluctuations in their share price.

However, on Tuesday, a website called Selerity, which automatically scans information useful to investors, picked up the early posting, which was then picked up by other outlets.

The earnings were weaker than forecast with revenues of $436m, a rise of 74% year-on-year, but $20m less than expected, and that sent investors into a selling spree.

Twitter also reported a net loss of $162m, an increase from the same period a year ago when it lost $132.4m.

"Yesterday at 3:07pm EDT, Shareholder.com inadvertently posted the Twitter earnings release prematurely on their investor relations website," Nasdaq said.

"We regret the incident and remain fully committed to providing the highest quality Investor Relations communication product and services to our clients."

Shareholder.com is a Nasdaq-owned site for investors.