Nasdaq acknowledges releasing Twitter results early

(Reuters) - Nasdaq acknowledged on Wednesday that its shareholder.com website had revealed Twitter Inc's disappointing results about one hour ahead of the scheduled time on Tuesday.

The micro-blogging company's shares fell sharply after key numbers from the earnings announcement were tweeted by market data firm Selerity at about 3:07 p.m. ET. Nasdaq halted trading in the stock 20 minutes later.

Selerity said it had found the release on Twitter's investor relations website, which is managed by Nasdaq.

Twitter released its results - which had been due at 4 p.m. ET - at 3:33 ET and the halt was lifted at 3:48 ET.

The company's stock closed down 18 percent at $42.27, wiping out about $5 billion of market value.

"The posting was caused by an operational issue that exposed the release on Twitter's IR website for approximately 45 seconds," the Nasdaq said in a statement.

This was not the first time that Selerity has revealed earnings of a top company before the scheduled release time.

The New Jersey-based company, founded by former Thomson Reuters Corp employee Ryan Terpstra, broke Microsoft Corp's earnings in 2011 from the company's website more than an hour before their scheduled release.

Twitter shares were down 5.2 percent at $40.08 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Ted Kerr)