Snapchat adds 7m users but loses revenue

The company reported ($2.31) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($2.05) by $0.26. The Los Angeles tech company reported $182 million in sales, up 153 percent from $71.8 million in last year’s second quarter.

Snap, which launched its IPO at the beginning of March this year, also revealed its revenue more-than doubled to $181.7m (£140m) in the quarter. As far as users are concerned – a metric investors are always concerned with – the company added 7 million new daily users for the quarter. Cantor Fitzgerald raised Snap from an “underweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and dropped their price objective for the company from $18.00 to $17.00 in a research note on Thursday, May 11th.

For Snap, there have always been signs that it would face bumps as a public company.

On a call with analysts Spiegel said he and co-founder Bobby Murphy would not sell their shares.

Average revenue per use jumped 10% year over year from 50 cents in last year’s second quarter to $1.05 this year.

Pivotal’s Brian Wieser was one of the few analysts who considered Snap’s results “in line” with his forecast. Only, because Facebook has been so quick to copy Snapchat features in Instagram, more time isn’t a luxury.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s comments about “growth hacking” were not entirely satisfactory for one Wall Street analyst.Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity FairA Wall Street analyst upstaged Snap CEO Evan Spiegel on the company’s Q2 conference call thanks to a classic “hot mic” snafu. 57,246,799 shares of the company traded hands. Snapchat had 148 million users this time past year. The stock’s market cap is $16.01 billion. Shares closed Thursday up almost 1 percent to $13.67.

Media stories about Snap (NYSE:SNAP) have been trending somewhat positive recently, Accern Sentiment reports. In the second quarter, Snap added a maps function for users to see where friends are, as well as a search section. Analysts had been expecting $186 million in revenue and a net loss of 14 cents a share. Accern ranks the sentiment of press coverage by reviewing more than 20 million news and blog sources in real-time.

Khan also said the self-serve product will help tap additional spend from existing advertisers and onboard new advertisers, which will drive “solid growth”.

Employees will be able to publicly sell their shares for the first time next week, presenting another test of confidence in the company.