Snap (SNAP +0.32%) stock's impressive run this year continued on Tuesday during after-market hours, when the photo- and video-sharing social network reported its latest quarterly results. Shares climbed more than 10% in after-hours trading as of 5 p.m. EDT, as investors were impressed by strong revenue growth and a narrower-than-expected loss per share.
Capturing Snap's momentum during the period, the company beat expectations on a range of important metrics, including its revenue, loss per share, daily active users, and average revenue per user.
Here's a closer look at the quarter.
Image source: Snap.
Robust growth
Snap's second-quarter revenue soared 48% year over year to $388 million. This easily beat analysts' average forecast for revenue of $359.7 million. Notably, this revenue growth rate is an acceleration over the 39% top-line growth Snap saw in its first quarter.
Fueling this growth were a number of factors, including growth in Snapchat's daily active users and a surge in the company's average revenue per user. Daily active users increased from 188 million in the second quarter of 2018 to 203 million, beating a consensus analyst forecast for 192.4 million. Average revenue per user rose 37% year over year to $1.91.
Snap also moved closer to profitability during the quarter. Its operating loss was still significant at $305 million, but it marked a $53 million improvement over an operating loss of $357 million in the year-ago quarter. The company' non-GAAP (adjusted) loss per share was $0.06, beating a consensus analyst estimate for a loss per share of $0.10 and representing a big improvement over a loss of $0.14 in the year-ago quarter.
"The growth in our community, engagement, and revenue is the result of several transitions we completed over the past 18 months," said Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
Impressive user engagement
One highlight from the quarter worth taking a closer look at was the broad-based strength in daily active user growth on Snapchat. Daily active users were up both sequentially and year over year in North America, Europe, and the company's "rest of world" market, management said. Daily active users were also up sequentially and year over year on both iOS and Android.
Further, management's update on the performance of its overhauled Android app is encouraging. Launched during Q1, this marks the first full quarter of the new app's availability. Users on the app are now sending 7% more snaps compared to what they were sending with the old version. This is "an important leading indicator of their long-term retention," management said in the second-quarter update. In addition, Snap saw a more than 20% boost in the retention rate of first-time users on the app.
Looking ahead, Snap expects more robust growth. Management guided for third-quarter revenue to be between $420 million and $435 million, up from $298 million in the third quarter of 2018.
