Snap earnings: First report since IPO is major test for Snapchat parent company

May 8, 2017

Snap Inc. will face its first real test as a public company when the Snapchat parent company reports first-quarter earnings after the market closes Wednesday.

Snap had a highly celebrated IPO in March, but then saw it stock fluctuate as competition increased and analysts questioned Snap’s high valuation. Now, the key question for many investors is Snapchat’s daily user growth, which had been pressured in previous quarters.

It’s an even more fraught question now, as Facebook Inc. introduces more Snapchat-like features, and recently showed that Instagram Stories have surpassed Snapchat in terms of daily active users, as has WhatsApp Status, another Snapchat-like feature, which reported 175 million daily active users.

Still, Snap may have an edge over Facebook with its active user base of 18-to-34 year olds, who are highly engaged on the app, visiting more than 18 times a day.

Earnings: Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect a loss per share of 21 cents.Revenue: The FactSet revenue consensus is $158 million, up from $38.8 million in the year-ago period but less than $165.7 million in the holiday quarter. The Estimize consensus is for $159 million. The Estimize consensus, made up of estimates from hedge-fund executives, brokerages and buy-side analysts, is also for a loss per share of 21 cents.

Revenue: The FactSet revenue consensus is $158 million, up from $38.8 million in the year-ago period but less than $165.7 million in the holiday quarter. The Estimize consensus is for $159 million.


What to look for: In its prospectus, Snap called itself a camera company rather than a social network. It appears to be turning into more of a media network, however, as it has signed original show deals with networks including NBCUniversal, Discovery, ESPN and Scripps Networks Interactive.

The deals with these networks may be necessary for Snap as it fights against other social-media companies for advertising dollars. The Snapchat app only recently started monetizing and recorded revenue of $404.5 billion in 2016.

3 Things to Know Before Snap’s Earnings Debut

Snap faces its first big test as a public company when it reports earnings Wednesday afternoon. Investors were willing to put concerns about slowing user growth aside during the company’s initial public offering, and the financial release will give a sense of whether the Snapchat-parent is turning things back around.

Here are the key things to look out for.

User growth: The company saw a big deceleration in daily-active-user growth in the fourth quarter, which was partially attributed to an Android bug. With that resolved, the question is whether Snap growth is suffering as Facebook and Instagram aggressively push copycat features. Plus, as Snapchat’s user “mix” gets older, finding new people who will visit the app daily might be getting tougher, Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Graham wrote last week. He predicts growth slowed to 35% in the first quarter, relative to a year ago. (The service grew users by 48% in the fourth quarter.)

Revenue growth: The big reason why investors were willing to overlook user-growth concerns during the IPO was that they saw huge potential for Snap to grow revenue as advertisers continue to shift spending away from TV and toward digital platforms. Analysts’ revenue estimates span a wide range, from $130 million to $195 million. That’s “seemingly due to the early-stage nature of Snap’s ad platform,” Graham wrote.

Future outlook: During earnings releases, companies tend to provide “guidance” about what they expect financial metrics to look like for the current quarter or current year. Since this marks Snap’s first time reporting results, it’s not clear what figures, if any, the company will provide projections for. Graham notes that Facebook and Google don’t issue formal guidance, while Twitter stopped doing so for full calendar years. If Snap gives any guidance at all, investors will pay close attention, as stocks often move based on expectations for the future.

The key indicator to watch is daily active users. Snap had 158 million people use the app every day as of the fourth quarter. Growth slowed recently, though, coinciding with the launch of “Instagram Stories” last summer by Facebook. That is a direct competitor to Snapchat Stories, mimicking many of its features. Instagram Stories already has 200 million daily active users, surpassing those on Snapchat.

Still, Snap has lofty plans to turn itself into an advertising juggernaut, a market long dominated by Facebook and Google. Snap has less than 1% of the global digital advertising pie, according to eMarketer Inc. It is focused on growing in North America and Europe, markets with big ad dollars. And it is scrambling to develop television-like original content to keep users engaged.

Snap is expensive by almost any valuation metric. Shares fetch an enterprise-value-to-revenue multiple of 18 times, far richer than Facebook at 9.6 times, Twitter at 4.7 and GoPro’s multiple of less than 1.

FENDING OFF FACEBOOK:REVENUE PER USER:

The numbers

• Revenue: $150 million reported vs. $158 million expected by a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate
• Global DAUs: 166 million reported vs. 167.3 million expected by StreetAccount
• ARPU: 90 cents reported vs. 90 cents per share expected by StreetAccount

• Loss of $2.31 a share

Snapchat is wooing ad buyers with discount coupons and bonuses

May 24, 2017

Snap needs to show good results in the second quarter, and it’s looking to goose its ad business with offers of discounts and incentives to ad buyers.

The platform is incentivizing brands and media buyers, offering bonuses, discount coupons and media credits for ad buys carried out in the second quarter of 2017, said multiple agency executives whom Digiday interviewed. The nature of the incentives, and their value, vary from one media agency to another. Agency execs reported the offers started last week and multiple buyers said the offers extend to mid-June, which happens to be when Snap’s second quarter starts to wrap up.

“I can confirm that there are some bonuses and added-value incentives,” said a media buyer at a holding company media agency who wished to remain anonymous. “The value of the discount varies from client to client, but the bottom line is that they’ve been very aggressive in offering incentives to get brands moving on their products.”

The move comes at a time when marketers are seeking a third scalable option outside of Google and Facebook, and pushing back against transparency issues with those platforms. More importantly, Snapchat has ground to make up after a dismal performance in its first quarterly earnings, which came out earlier this month.

“They’re doing it to accelerate their 2017 ad revenue, especially given their Q1 earnings miss,” said Tom Buontempo, president at Attention. “It’ll encourage new partners to run campaigns, which could lead to additional investment, especially if they’re successful.”

It’s a move clearly driven aimed at getting more advertisers on board the platform during the second quarter, so the company would be able to show “better revenue and scale” of advertisers in its next earnings report, said Brian Cristiano, CEO at Bold Worldwide. There are still doubts among ad buyers about Snapchat’s ad options, not to mention its slowing user growth that’s led some to say it’s the “next Twitter.” That is not meant as a compliment.

Here's why Snap shares may be down in the dumps through summer

Thursday, 11 May 2017

• Wall Street is worried over Snap's large share lockup expirations hitting the market in the coming months after the social media company's disappointing earnings report.
• Many insiders are restricted from selling stock for an agreed upon lockup period after the initial public offering.
• JPMorgan says an additional 1.2 billion Snap shares will become available for sale by the end of July.

Snap shares may be unable to stay above IPO price as big insider selling looms

Monday, 26 Jun 2017

Snap shares could fall below its IPO price in coming weeks, if historical trends hold true.

Shares of the Snapchat parent closed Monday 29 cents above the stock's initial public offering price of $17 a share. The move comes about a month before many insiders who hold shares of the Snapchat parent can begin selling their shares at the expiration of the first lockup period on July 31.

Looking at other social media giants, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn each fell an average of 24 percent in the 30 days ahead of their lockup expirations, MKM Partners managing director Rob Sanderson said in a Monday report.

Losses typically accelerated in the week ahead of the lockup expiration. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn declined an average 14 percent, while the Nasdaq rose 1.1 percent on average, Sanderson said.

Snap short interest, or bets that shares will decline, has increased by more than 65 percent in the latest two-week reporting period ended May 31, Sanderson said.

Similarly, short interest increased in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in the two weeks ahead of their lockup expirations, according to the report:

That said, declines around the lockup expiration could mark a turning point for Snap.

Facebook and Twitter shares began climbing the day after their lockup expirations, while LinkedIn reached a low the week after, according to Sanderson.

Previous MKM analysis of Snap showed that big social media stocks like Facebook and Twitter fell an average of 14 percent one day after their first public earnings report.

That report proved accurate as Snap shares plunged 21 percent on May 11, after the firm reported its first post-IPO earnings. Snap posted first-quarter net losses of $2.2 billion, due primarily to $2 billion spent on stock-based compensation expenses after its March 2 initial public offering. Quarterly revenue of $150 million missed expectations by $8 million.

Snap Inc Just Keeps Putting Itself at Risk

August 2, 2017

Snap Inc is getting desperate. The camera and social media company, which once had a market capitalization of $28 billion, is more aggressively turning to hardware to solve its software growth woes.

According to CNBC, Snap is in talks to buy Chinese drone maker Zero Zero Robotics for somewhere between $150 million and $200 million. Snap would likely leverage the drone maker’s technology to create an integrated Snap-streaming drone.

That would be the company’s second hardware product. Late last year, Snap launched Spectacles, integrated Snap-streaming glasses. Will this hardware push solve Snap’s growth problems?

Nope. Spectacles is a flop; a Snap-integrated drone would be a flop with better footage. Here’s why.

No One Wears Spectacles

Late last year, Snap launched Spectacles. They were supposed to be these super cool, trendy glasses which were connected to your smartphone and could be used to record snaps. It was like a GoPro Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRO) camera without any of the durability, but with all of the social and mobile integration. But despite all the fanfare and hype, the numbers seem to support the thesis that Spectacles have largely been a flop.

Snap doesn’t specifically break out Spectacles revenue, but the company does report “other revenue.” According to management, that “other revenue” is almost entirely Spectacles revenue. In this sense, Spectacles revenue was roughly $4.5 million the fourth quarter of 2016 and $8 million in the first quarter of 2017. That is $12.5 million in Spectacles revenue since the product launched. The average selling price (ASP) on a pair of Spectacles is about $130. Dividing the $12.5 million in total revenue by a $130 ASP, we can see that Spectacles has sold about 100,000 units (as of Q1 end).

With 166 million daily active users on Snapchat, that means less than one out of every thousand daily users owns a pair of Spectacles. That’s a pitifully low penetration rate.

And search interest trends indicate the currently low penetration rate will remain low. Search interest related to Spectacles is only falling and is actually near an all-time low since the product’s launch.

A Snap Drone Will Also Flop

Drones are cool, and the industry is growing rapidly. Research firm Gartner thinks the global drone market grew 60% last year. They also expect the market to grow another 39% this year.

Meanwhile, NPD thinks the U.S. drone market more than doubled in the 12-month period ending in February 2017. But the problem is that the growth is being driven almost entirely by the industry giant, China’s DJI.

DJI is the power-player in the industry. For drones priced between $500 and $1,000, DJI is the market leader with 36% share. It’s also the market leader for drones priced between $1,000 and $2,000 with 66% share. The same is true for drones above $2,000, where DJI is the market leader with 67% market share.

This dominance is only growing and it’s scaring away competitors. This is true even in the price range market ($500 to $1,000) where DJI is least dominant. The firm with the second most market share in that price range, 3D Robotics, threw in the towel last year on competing with DJI. They’ve stopped making drones and instead are focusing exclusively on software development.

Because of DJI’s dominance, betting on a drone to save the day for troubled SNAP stock is the wrong bet to make. GoPro bulls made a similar bet. They also thought a drone would save the day. There was plenty of hype surrounding the launch of GoPro’s drone, Karma. But GoPro’s operational results haven’t really improved since Karma’s launch. Consequently, GPRO stock is near all-time lows.

Bottom Line on SNAP Stock

Snap is really trying to live up to its name as a “camera” company. But SNAP investors have nothing material to hang their hat on. Spectacles has a been a flop thus far, and the drone market is being dominated by DJI.