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Jack Dorsey, it turns out, is full of surprises.
In his first three weeks on the job as Twitter’s permanent CEO, he laid off 300-plus employees, gave back $200 million in stock to reassure the remaining staff and publicly apologized to outside developers for Twitter’s role in what has been a rocky relationship over the years. He also brought in a longtime, big-name Googler as executive chairman and filed documents to bring his (other) company public.
It appears the quiet, timid, indecisive version of Dorsey who used to run Twitter has vanished. With the new version, nothing seems to be out of bounds. Which can be fun if you’re, say, a journalist covering the company. But what about people who don’t like surprises — say, Wall Street analysts or investors? Well, those are the people Dorsey will be asked to impress on Tuesday when Twitter reports its third-quarter earnings results.
The good news is that Dorsey has already prepared them appropriately: When Twitter laid off 8 percent of its workforce earlier this month, it took the opportunity to reinforce its guidance with Wall Street. As a result, analysts expect Twitter to report an adjusted profit of five cents per share on revenue of $559 million, a jump of nearly 55 percent over the same period last year.
User growth is always a bit of a mystery with Twitter, but RBC Capital’s Mark Mahaney projects the company will have added about seven million new users over last quarter, jumping to 323 million in total (including those who receive tweets via text).
The mystery on this call, then, is what Dorsey will say, or perhaps more importantly, what he won’t say. A lot has happened since he last answered questions from analysts. Here are a few things we hope they ask.
Who runs Twitter when you’re running Square?
Dorsey has his hands full running two companies, and his success will probably depend on whether or not he can lean on strong executive teams at both. At Twitter, Dorsey’s No. 2 appears to be COO Adam Bain, but with Square’s IPO roadshow looming, it would be nice to know exactly who takes the helm when he’s not in the building.
Are more changes coming to Twitter’s board?
The answer to that is yes, according to sources, but who might be leaving and when is still a mystery. Don’t expect Dorsey to give specifics here, but it would be interesting if he acknowledged that the board is still under construction.
How is Moments going?
Twitter has never pumped up a product the way it did Moments, its new multimedia effort centered around specific real-world events. The product launched earlier this month, and Twitter pegged it as a way to increase engagement of existing users, but also as an important effort to get new users onto the platform. It’s new, sure, but given the hype and a massive media blitz Twitter has planned to promote it, it’ll be worth listening to see how it has been received.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
