Snap Inc. Beats Q1 Estimates And Returns To User Growth, Goosing Stock

Snapchat parent Snap Inc. beat Wall Street estimates across the board with its first-quarter results, sending shares of the social networking company surging in after-hours trading.

The company reported a 39% increase in revenue over the prior-year period, to $320 million. Its loss per share narrowed to 10 cents, ahead of analysts’ expectation of a 12-cent loss per share.

Investors latched onto one key stat, though: daily active users. The metric reached 190 million in the quarter ending March 31, which is higher than the 186 million of the fourth quarter but down a bit from the 191 million in the year-ago period, though it broke a three-quarter slump of sequential declines. Analysts had forecast 187.2 million users.

The company’s long-beleaguered stock, which bottomed out last December at just $4.82 a share, gained 4% during the regular trading session today to close at $11.99. After the earnings news, it climbed as much as 10% in after-hours trading.

Following a strong fourth-quarter earnings report in February, Snap has seen its fortunes improve, dispelling much of the gloom that has hung over the company from late-2017 though all of 2018.

Snap was destabilized by a stream of top-level executive departures, a deeply unpopular redesign of its app in late 2017 and ongoing struggles to perfect an Android version of the service. CFO Tim Stone, poached from Amazon, abruptly resigned four months later, officially exiting in February.

The tech startup’s stock price is still below the teens and low 20s, the level where it traded for more than a year after its IPO in March 2017. Still, it has more than doubled in 2019 to date.