After two quarters of losing users, Snap’s losses seem to have stabilized. The company says today that it has the same number of daily active users globally as it did last quarter at 186 million. That’s still fewer than the 191 million it had at this same time last year, but suggests the platform’s user base may have stabilized.
Beyond the stable user base, Snap set a new record for quarterly revenue at $390 million, which brings its yearly total to more than $1.1 billion. The company still isn’t profitable, but CEO Evan Spiegel says spending has leveled out. Today’s earnings report represents a great cap to a miserable year for Snap. Spiegel lost multiple top executives in 2018, including his head of finance, chief strategy officer, head of sales, and president of hardware, but he says they’re hiring and are excited about the new talent. (The company’s CFO also left earlier this year.)
In prepared remarks, Spiegel referenced the departures, but did not address them outright.
“The transitions we made in both the Snapchat platform and our business last year were necessary and created many of the opportunities we have ahead of us, but change is always difficult and this past year was no exception,” he says. “We focused on building the leadership team we need in order to execute against our long‐term opportunity, and recently welcomed several talented and experienced leaders for the next stage of our company’s growth.”
While Snap lost users because of its reviled redesign, the company says it ultimately resulted in 30 percent more people watching Snapchat-exclusive stories and shows. He also says iOS daily active users increased both quarter over quarter and year over year. Still, Android is a sore point for the company. Spiegel says the engineering team is rebuilding the Android app and is rolling out a new version to a small group of users. That’ll be crucial to get right if the company wants to not only keep its users from leaving, but also attract more.
