An explosion of user base growth and revenues during the pandemic has caused the shares of Snap Inc, parent of Snapchat, to shoot up by 23% on Tuesday. The company reported that it beat all estimates for its user growth and revenue in Q3 due to the increase in usage during the pandemic.
Close to an all-time high for Snap Inc., its share price was hovering around $34 on Tuesday, up by almost 97% in 2020. Currently, its stock price stands at $28.45 per share.
Several Wall Street analysts predicted revenues of $555.9 million in Q3 for Snap Inc., but the company beat it by quite a margin, reporting a revenue of $679 million. Snap Inc.’s revenues largely come from, unsurprisingly, advertisements on the Snapchat app. The company has recorded a massive 52% year over year growth in revenues after a long period filled with struggles.
The pandemic saw people resorting to social media platforms to stay in touch with family and friends, and Snapchat’s numbers are a testament to it. The platform has recorded an 18% increase in its daily active users year over year, to 249 million in Q3, beating analysts’ projections of 244 million. The user growth in Q3 is up by 4% from the previous quarter (Q2) when it reported 238 million daily active users.
Snap Inc. said it will continue to witness this user growth in Q4 as well, estimating 257 million daily active users in the next three months, whereas, the analysts predict it would be around 249.81 million daily active users.
Despite this massive growth, the company continues to be a loss-making firm. That being said, the losses have decreased by 12% from last year, which means that it is on the path of profitability, as long as that might be. The firm has reported a net loss of $200 million in Q3 2020. It also broke analysts’ forecasts averaging a loss of 5 cents per share and has shown adjusted earnings of 1 cent per share.
Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc, said, “Our focus on delivering value for our community and advertising partners is yielding positive results during this challenging time. The adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated, and we are working together as a team to execute on the many opportunities in front of us.”
Since the time it went public in 2017, Snap Inc. has gone through considerable struggles, trying to keep revenues incoming. It’s most notable feature, ‘Stories,’ has not made its way to almost every social media platform, which took away from the platform’s ingenuity. It was only recently that it has found some comfort in the form of revenues through advertisements. The company claims, almost 75% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and France use Snapchat. These numbers have helped the California-based social media platform to invite big companies to advertise on its platform.
