WHAT’S HAPPENING? Twitter has been miscounting user growth since 2014.. But, “It still delivered for Wall Street,” and the company “thinks it might achieve profitability by the end of the year.”

How?

It’s a bizarre scenario in what was an otherwise modest earnings report. Twitter reported $590 million in revenue for the quarter, a decline of 4 percent year-over-year. That marks the third straight quarter of year-over-year revenue declines. Wall Street expected the company to generate $587 million last quarter.

One positive sign: It finally expects to turn a profit by the fourth quarter — that’s bottom line profit. It stands to reason since Twitter reported the lowest quarterly loss in Q3, about $21 million, than it has in three years.

One big reason for potential profitability: Twitter is spending much less on stock-based compensation for employees than it was a year ago. Twitter spent $101 million on stock-based compensation last quarter, down 36 percent from a year ago.

Twitter’s operating expenses are still too high for what probably ought to be a low-overhead microblogging service.