• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Today, Emily Blunt is worth $80 million thanks to her Hollywood career—but she actually wanted to be a UN Spanish translator on $80K

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Today, Emily Blunt is worth $80 million thanks to her Hollywood career—but she actually wanted to be a UN Spanish translator on $80K
TechSnapchat

Snap Shares Plummet After Slowing User Growth Reported

By
Reuters
Reuters
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Reuters
Reuters
Down Arrow Button Icon
May 11, 2017, 12:37 PM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Snap Inc shares plunged on Wednesday after the owner of Snapchat reported slowing user growth and revenue in its first earnings report as a public company, missing some Wall Street estimates as it competes with copycat messaging apps.

Shares tumbled 23 percent in after-hours trading to wipe some $6 billion from Snap’s market value, a reversal for the company after a red-hot March initial public offering that was the biggest for a U.S. tech company since Facebook Inc’s 2012 debut.

The stock fell to $17.66, just above its IPO price of $17.

Some investors were hoping Snap would surprise them with big numbers in its first quarterly report, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said.

“The fact that they failed to live up to expectations, let alone exceed them, disappointed people,” he said.

The performance echoed slides in Facebook and Twitter after they posted debut scorecards following their IPOs. Twitter shares cratered 24 percent the next day, while Facebook’s tumbled 11 percent, still the biggest-ever one-day losses for both.

Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel sought to reassure investors during an earnings call, fielding a dozen questions that ranged from strategy to how it would deal with competitors.

He also did not shy away from one query that allowed him to take a feisty jab at Facebook.

“If you want to be a creative company, you’ve got to get comfortable with and enjoy the fact that people are going to copy your product if you make great stuff,” he said.

Making a comparison to the search industry, Spiegel added: “Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google.”

Snap said its daily active users (DAUs) rose 36.1 percent to 166 million in the first quarter from a year earlier, marking a slowdown from the 47.7 percent rise for the fourth quarter and 62.8 percent jump for the third quarter that the company reported in its IPO filing.

The slowing rate of growth was in line with an estimate from JPMorgan, which accurately expected 166 million DAUs for the first quarter. Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co Inc had pegged them even higher at 173 million.

Snap’s March IPO priced above the company’s target range as investors put aside concerns about a lack of profits and voting rights to get a piece of the action. The IPO raised $3.4 billion and gave the company a market valuation of roughly $24 billion, and shares surged 44 percent in their first day of trading.

Facebook, which made a $3 billion bid for Snapchat in 2013, has upped the ante by offering camera-related features similar to Snap on its platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp. The company said in April that Instagram Stories alone had reached 200 million daily active users.

Snapchat’s growth was faster than Facebook, however, which said its overall daily user base grew 18 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, as well as Twitter, which reported growth of 14 percent in DAUs from a year earlier.

Revenue Disappointment

Like many other Silicon Valley businesses, Snap is closely tied to its young founders.

Spiegel, who received a stock-based bonus worth nearly $600 million for taking the company public, is 26, and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Bobby Murphy is 28. The company, though, has brought on others with more experience, including Chairman Michael Lynton, former chief executive of Sony Corp’s movie and music businesses.

A lot is riding on Spiegel to build products that delight people, said analyst Greenfield. “The future of Snapchat is on Evan Spiegel and his team to out-innovate everyone else. Time will tell whether that’s possible,” he added.

Snap’s revenue jumped nearly four-fold year-over-year to $149.6 million but fell short of the average analyst forecast of $158 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue was also down from the fourth quarter of 2016, a seasonally stronger period for ad sales, when it was $166 million.

Revenue was “a relatively disappointing number,” Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser said. “To their credit,” he added, “they did guide towards a number that would be lower, which it was.”

Average revenue per user was 90 cents in the first quarter, Snap said, up from 32 cents the same quarter a year earlier but below the $1.05 per user in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Snap’s net loss widened to $2.21 billion, or $2.31 per share, in the first quarter, from $104.6 million, or 14 cents per share, due to stock-based compensation related to the IPO.

Although the figure of $2 billion in total stock-based compensation was known ahead of time, investors were surprised to see all of it show up in a single quarter rather than spread out over time, said Eric Kim, managing partner at Goodwater Capital.

“It is an eye-popping number for sure,” he said.

Snapchat launched in 2012 as a mobile app that allows users to send photos, known as snaps, that vanish within seconds. The company rebranded as Snap Inc last year, and moved into the hardware space with Spectacles, its colorful sunglasses that record short videos to post on Snapchat.

Users created more than 3 billion snaps daily on average during the first quarter, up from more than 2.5 billion during the third quarter of 2016, the company said.

Snap receives some revenue from branded or sponsored filters and lenses, but depends on advertising dollars for the bulk of its overall revenue.

Digital marketing firm eMarketer in March had trimmed its 2017 U.S. advertising revenue forecast for Snap by $30 million to $770 million, citing higher-than-expected revenue sharing with the company’s partners.

The total U.S. digital advertising market is meanwhile expected to reach $83 billion, according to eMarketer, up nearly 16 percent from last year.

About the Author
By Reuters
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

Michael Burry just shorted Caterpillar’s 172% AI rally. One analyst says his bet won’t even matter
Investingstock prices
Michael Burry just shorted Caterpillar’s 172% AI rally. One analyst says his bet won’t even matter
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 2, 2026
6 hours ago
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
EconomyDebt
AI’s $2.2 trillion deficit fix is already half fake, economists say
By Tristan BoveJuly 2, 2026
7 hours ago
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
AIEye on AI
Anthropic’s Fable model is back. But U.S. AI policy is still a mess
By Jeremy KahnJuly 2, 2026
7 hours ago
ai
North AmericaImmigration
Trump’s $46 billion ‘smart wall’ with Mexico bets on AI and scale
By Rebecca Santana and The Associated PressJuly 2, 2026
9 hours ago
sk
AISouth Korea
AI “grief videos” turn mourning into a $390 service in South Korea
By Hyung-Jin Kim and The Associated PressJuly 2, 2026
9 hours ago
Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo looks to the far right during a conference.
CryptoBlockchain
Securitize is latest crypto company to go public as BlackRock-backed firm sees stock jump 3% on debut
By Camila Grigera NaónJuly 2, 2026
9 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
2 days ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
8 days ago
Today, Emily Blunt is worth $80 million thanks to her Hollywood career—but she actually wanted to be a UN Spanish translator on $80K
Success
Today, Emily Blunt is worth $80 million thanks to her Hollywood career—but she actually wanted to be a UN Spanish translator on $80K
By Orianna Rosa RoyleJuly 2, 2026
19 hours ago
Mark Zuckerberg feeds his cows macadamia nuts and beer to create the 'highest-quality beef in the world' on his $300 million estate in Hawaii
Success
Mark Zuckerberg feeds his cows macadamia nuts and beer to create the 'highest-quality beef in the world' on his $300 million estate in Hawaii
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 2, 2026
9 hours ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
2 days ago
Americans are escaping the U.S. for New Zealand where house prices have hit a new low—but only wealthy Americans with $3 million spare can invest
Success
Americans are escaping the U.S. for New Zealand where house prices have hit a new low—but only wealthy Americans with $3 million spare can invest
By Emma BurleighJuly 2, 2026
11 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.