Snap's Q4 wasn't as bad as expected, shares spike
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Snap (SNAP) shares were soaring in after-hours trade Tuesday after the company reported better-than-expected financial results.
The social media giant reported a net loss of 4 cents per share which was less than consensus estimates of a 8 per share net loss during Q4.
Snap reported revenue of $389.8 million which was better than analysts’ predictions of $377.5 million.
Active users, a key industry metric, stabilized despite competition from rival social companies continuing to heat up. Snap had 186 million daily active users in Q4, which remained unchanged from the previous quarter. Analysts were expecting daily active users to decline by 1.5 million.
Shares of Snap were up 25.53% as of 9:44 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Snap’s biggest rival Facebook (FB) revealed during its earnings report last week that Instagram Stories now has 500 million daily active users.
Snap also reported that compared to 2018, 30% more users are watching Publisher Stories and Shows daily.
“We ended the year with user engagement stabilizing and have started rolling out the new version of our Android application to a small percentage of our community,” CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement. “We are substantially closer to achieving profitability, as we have maintained a relatively flat cost structure across the past five quarters while growing full-year revenue 43 percent year-over-year.”
Snap reported that it now expects revenue between $285 million and $310 million in Q1 of 2019.
It has been tumultuous in the C-Suite for Snap. Ten executives left the company in the past year and a half, and in the first month of 2019, Chief Financial Officer Tim Stone announced that he was leaving after less than a year on the job. Laura Sweet, Snap’s chief accounting officer, has been serving as interim CFO until a more permanent option is found. Investors and analysts will be waiting to hear from Spiegel address the concerning turnover rate among executives at the company.
Snap’s earnings conference call kicks off at 5 p.m. ET.
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Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @heidi_chung.
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