(Reuters) - Nasdaq acknowledged on Wednesday that its shareholder.com website had revealed Twitter Inc's (>> Twitter Inc) 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 (>> Thomson Reuters Corporation)
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)