Snap beats on earnings, boasts strong user growth in Q1
- Sara Fischer, author of Axios Media Trends
Greg Ruben / Axios
Snapchat beat Wall Street expectations on subscriber growth, earnings per share and revenue last quarter, sending its stock up in after-hours trading.
Details: CEO Evan Spiegel said in prepared remarks that the camera company officially has more Android users than iOS users — "a critical milestone that reflects the long-term value of the investment we made to rebuild our Android application."
- That milestone matters considering how much Snapchat's stock was hit a few years back when the company had to redesign its app to work better on Android phones. Google's Android operating system is used much more commonly around the world than Apple's iOS operating system.
- Snapchat added 15 million daily active users in Q1. Spiegel says Snap's daily active user base outside of North America and Europe is now its "largest community."
By the numbers, per CNBC:
- Adjusted loss per share: 0 cents vs. 6 cents per share forecast by Refinitiv
- Revenue: $770 million vs. $743.8 million forecast by Refinitiv
- Global daily active users (DAUs): 280 million vs. 274.62 million per FactSet
- Average revenue per user (ARPU): $2.74 vs. $2.72 forecast by FactSet
The big picture: Snapchat's business has boomed during the pandemic, in part because its user engagement grew during stay-at-home lockdowns. The company has also been able to avoid a lot of the regulatory headaches that its peers faced over the past year.
- That increase in user engagement over the past year has led Snapchat to more new content on the platform. The company says is added over 300 new channels to its platform Discover in Q1.
What to watch: Snapchat says its goal for the year is to increase its ad revenue by making it easier for small business advertisers to buy ads via Snap's self-serve ad platform. But the company continued to warn investors that Apple's upcoming iOS privacy changes could present some ad sales risk.