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Fly News Breaks for February 2, 2016
FB, VZ, YHOO, TWTR
Feb 2, 2016 | 06:26 EDT
Stifel analyst Scott Devitt downgraded Twitter (TWTR) to Sell from Hold after "materially lowering" his forward estimates for the company. Twitter is a product that has "never fully developed into a sustainable public company," Devitt tells investors in a research note. To those that believe the microblog's 320M active user base is significant, the analyst points out that Yahoo (YHOO) still reports 1B monthly active users across its network and AOL's final public disclosure last year prior to its acquisition by Verizon (VZ) still showed nearly 200M unique visitors. Twitter will be challenged to reach its near- and long-term financial expectations, the analyst contends. Devitt points out that Facebook (FB) continues to generate over two times as much advertising revenue per monthly active user in the U.S. as Twitter. He has a $14 price target for the shares. Twitter closed yesterday up $1.10 to $17.90 after The Information reported that Silver Lake and investor Marc Andreessen have "considered some sort of deal" for the microblog operator.