Twitter may turn a quarterly profit for the first time ever

Twitter got Wall Street buzzing as it said it could turn a quarterly profit for the first time ever — despite admitting it has been overstating monthly user numbers for the past three years.

The social network has never had a profitable quarter based on generally accepted accounting principles, but it said Thursday it “will likely be GAAP profitable” in the fourth quarter if it reaches the high end of its own estimates.

The news sent Twitter’s stock soaring 18 percent, to $20.31.

The prospect of a first-time profit made Twitter’s reveal that it had exaggerated the size of its user base easier to swallow. Despite adding 4 million users this quarter, Twitter’s user base grew by only 2 million, as the company had to revise previous estimates.

Any growth was welcome, however, as the company reported zero new users added during the previous quarter.

Twitter said the error in past user estimates was caused when it wrongly counted people who logged into applications associated with the company’s Fabric software platform, which Twitter sold this year to Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

The San Francisco-based company headed by Jack Dorsey reported it has 330 million monthly active users in the quarter ended on Sept. 30. The growth was helped by greater use of e-mail and push notifications to point people toward tweets they want to read.

Twitter has stepped up efforts to keep people hooked through live-streaming deals, including broadcasts of concerts, professional golfing events and news programs.

Last month, Twitter began a test of tweets that are as long as 280 characters, double the existing cap, to allow people to better express themselves.

The company is diversifying its revenue further beyond advertising. Revenue from data licensing and other sources was $87 million in the third quarter, up 22 percent from a year earlier, Twitter said, adding that it signed “a significant number of new enterprise deals” in the quarter.

The social network reported third-quarter revenue of $590 million, beating the analyst consensus of $587 million, but down 4 percent from last year’s $616 million.