Tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump is worth $2bn to Twitter, analyst calculates

If Donald Trump were to leave Twitter he would wipe $2bn (£1.6bn) from the company's value, an analyst has declared.

Twitter has played host to one of the most captivating reality shows since Trump won the US presidential election in November 2016, and in the following nine months barely a day has gone by without the tweeter-in-chief firing out controversial 140-character missives to his 36 million followers.

James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co, a stockbroker in New York, said Twitter could see as much as $2bn wiped from its market valuation, which currently sits at just below $12bn, if Trump quit tweeting.

Speaking of Twitter during an interview with Bloomberg, Cakmak said: "There is no better free advertising in the world than the president of the United States".

The analyst criticised Twitter for doing a poor job of making the most of opportunities presented to it, as its user base lags behind that of Snapchat and Facebook. "What's most important is the execution of the right strategy, since at the present state we find Twitter not capitalising on the opportunity that's in front of them."

Although Cakmak doesn't think Trump quitting Twitter would lead to a mass exodus of users, he believes investors would be spooked by the social network losing its star attraction, then selling a stock they believe to be overvalued without Trump's involvement.

Trump has posted over 35,000 tweets since he joined the platform in March 2009, a total he adds to on a daily basis. Even years-old tweets make the news in 2017, after being dug up by observers to, in some cases, show how Trump's views have altered in his transition from reality TV star to president.

Cakmak estimates Twitter has 125 million daily users, around 30% fewer than Snapchat, while Twitter itself, which does not publish the exact figures, said in July that daily users rose 12% in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2016.