Twitter’s UK staff get £11.7m share payout

Twitter’s UK arm paid just under £1.2m in tax last year, as it handed out £11.7m in shares to its 237 staff.

Fresh accounts for Twitter UK Ltd. filed to Companies House for last year show that the social media giant made £132.12m in revenue, up 28 per cent on the previous year.

But gross profit (prior to administrative expenses and tax) slipped to £2.8m, compared to £3.5m a year earlier. Twitter attributed this to additional share-based expenses.

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The business recorded a charge of £11.66m related to the share-based payment plans, up on last year’s handout of £8.5m.

Its wages bill also rose by a quarter to £25.1m, in line an increase in head count across all its departments, which brought its total employee number to 237, compared to 192 a year earlier. The pay packets of Twitter’s top UK executives are not revealed in the accounts.

Tax bill rises

The UK company paid £1.15m in taxes, a significant increase on 2018 when it paid just £41,000 due to factors including deferred tax credits.

Although the accounts only cover 2019, Twitter also flagged the potential effects that Covid-19 could have on its operations, saying that restrictions have “caused, and are expected to continue to cause, decreased advertiser demand for our platform” as well as a slowdown in economic activity and volatile financial markets.

Shares in Twitter Inc, the global parent of the UK wing, were trading at around $47 this afternoon, up 45 per cent since the start of this year.

Twitter recently rolled out a new feature called ‘Fleets’, which automatically delete after 24 hours.

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