Jack Dorsey is staying silent about the Twitter sale rumors

With Twitter rescheduling its third-quarter earnings release to 4 a.m. on Thursday, everyone was expecting a big news announcement.

Pertinently, people were expecting Twitter's management to make an announcement about - or at least comment on - the recent rumors relating to the company reportedly putting itself up for sale.

But they didn't get that.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey opened up the company's earnings call by saying he wanted to address the recent "market speculation" related to the company.

"Our board is committed to maximizing long term shareholder value," he said.

"We don't plan to comment further on this topic," he bluntly concluded.

So the Twitter sale rumor mill continues to churn.

Companies that have reportedly taken a look at snapping up Twitter in recent weeks included Disney, Softbank, and Salesforce. The CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, said he walked away from a deal owing to Twitter's price, work culture, and the amount of abuse on the site.

While there was no M&A chatter during the earnings release and call, there was some news.

Twitter announced it is laying off 9% of its workforce - primarily in its sales team - as it looks to cut costs and work toward profitability in 2017.

The company beat analysts' expectations on both revenue and EPS in its third quarter, but it still posted a loss of $103 million in the period.

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