In a report by Social Media Giant Snapchat, the company has reported a net loss of $350 million, or 28 cents per share, compared to a loss of $170 million, or 20 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, Snap reported a loss of 13 cents. Analysts on average expected a loss of 16 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Revenue per user rose 46 percent from a year earlier to $1.53, while the cost of revenue per user rose 5 percent to $1.02.
Still, the company expects its year-over-year revenue growth rate to moderate in the current quarter compared with the fourth quarter, Vollero said.
The company is redesigning Snapchat to make it easier to use. Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said the new version had rolled out to 40 million users and would launch worldwide in the first quarter.
Revenue rose 72 percent to $285.7 million, beating analysts’ expectations of $253.2 million as companies advertised more in the key holiday quarter.
Instagram, with more than twice the daily users of Snapchat and backed by Facebook’s large bank account, has threatened to stamp out its rival by copying features such as photo filters and disappearing slide shows.
Confidence that the two could coexist in the social media sector was shaken when Snapchat’s user growth stalled last year. Analysts, though, said that Snapchat appeared willing to look inward and try to fix problems rather than be distracted by Instagram.
“They are going to continue to be competitors, and Snap is doing a creditable job of competing for revenue,” analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities said.
SNAPCHAT IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO USE
Acknowledging a perception that Snapchat is popular mainly among millennials, Spiegel said: “We believe that the redesign has also made our application simpler and easier to use, especially for older users.”
(Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson, Meredith Mazzilli, Anil D’Silva and Cynthia Osterman)
