Snap Inc.\u2019s revenue and user growth beat analysts\u2019 estimates in the third quarter, boosted by an increase in downloads of the revamped Android version of its mobile app. A tepid forecast for the current period, combined with a strong runup in the stock price this year, sent the shares lower in late trading.<\/p>\n
The company reported a 13% quarterly jump in daily active users for its Snapchat application, to 210 million, beating the 206 million average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Third-quarter sales jumped 50% to $446 million, compared with the $437.9 million projected by Wall Street.<\/p>\n
Snapchat, which lets people send video and picture messages that disappear and offers popular\u00a0photo filters, seems to have mostly recovered from a rocky performance after its 2017 initial public offering. It has weathered executive departures, user defections and tough competition from Facebook Inc.\u2019s Instagram. The company has been working toward reducing expenses, helping narrow the net loss in the recent period to $227 million, or 16 cents a share. Analysts had projected $262.3 million.<\/p>\n
But the positive results were overshadowed by Snap\u2019s revenue outlook for the fourth quarter, which at the midpoint came in below analysts\u2019 expectations. Even after three quarters of beating Wall Street\u2019s projections, the forecast signaled that Snap\u2019s growth is still a work in progress.<\/p>\n
The company has improved Snapchat\u2019s performance, especially on Android phones, and increased the amount of fun and creative tools for the app, including social games and filters that allow people to manipulate their faces into cartoon characters. That\u2019s led users to open it 30 times a day on average, according to Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel. Previously, the Android version of the app was buggy and slow, making it difficult for Snapchat to grow in important markets where Android is dominant — outside the U.S. and Europe. Following the long process of rebuilding the app, the new Android version was finally released to all users earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Now, advertisers are slowly looking to Snapchat as an alternative to the technology industry\u2019s much larger platforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoogle and Facebook dominate mobile advertising, but there is plenty of room for other winners as mobile time spent continues to scale,\u201d said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Lightshed Partners. \u201cOur conviction in Snapchat\u2019s recovery has grown meaningfully over the course of 2019, as we hear positive first-hand feedback from advertising clients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snapchat still needs to win over advertisers in Android-heavy countries, where most of its growth is. Snap said it expects 214 million to 215 million daily average users in the fourth quarter, helping the company generate revenue of $540 million to $560 million. Analysts on average expected $557 million in sales this quarter.<\/p>\n
Snap shares fell 1.4% in extended trading, after earlier closing down 4% at $14. The shares have more than doubled so far this year, but aren\u2019t yet higher than their $17 IPO price in 2017.<\/p>\n
Santa Monica, California-based Snapchat has become a poster child for Facebook\u2019s competitive hold on the social-media market. Facebook and its photo-sharing app Instagram have repeatedly copied Snapchat\u2019s best features, cutting into its potential. Now, Facebook is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations. Snapchat\u2019s recovery could weaken the government\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n
Both companies are now facing competition from TikTok, a new social network popular with young people, owned by China\u2019s Bytedance Inc. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is rallying employees to compete with TikTok through a copycat app called Lasso, Snap\u2019s Spiegel said Tuesday on a conference call that \u201cwe definitely consider them a friend,\u201d noting that TikTok uses Snap\u2019s app-development tools and advertises on Snapchat.<\/p>\n
Snap Inc.\u2019s revenue and user growth beat analysts\u2019 estimates in the third quarter, boosted by an increase in downloads of the revamped Android version of its mobile app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":184776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[40204,22637],"class_list":["post-324486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-snap","tag-snapchat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324492,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324486\/revisions\/324492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}