Twitter’s Capex Splurge: The Information’s Tech Briefing

Twitter’s fourth-quarter results today were impressive, and not just because they showed the same surging revenue growth as other internet-based ad companies Google, Facebook, Snap and Pinterest. Twitter’s ad sales business had been hit harder than most by the pandemic crunch earlier in the year and hadn’t recovered as much in the third quarter.

It was also notable that Twitter lifted capital expenditures 62% during the year, more than it originally forecast. The company ended up spending about 90% of the cash generated by the business on capex—mostly for a new data center—a sign that management didn’t want to put off necessary investments in infrastructure because of the pandemic’s squeeze on its business.