Snapchat reports record revenue but user numbers remain flat
Snapchat has recorded record revenue levels but the company’s active user numbers remain “flat”, the firm’s latest financial results have revealed.
Parent company Snap Inc reported revenue for the last three months of 390 million dollars (£301 million), up 36% from the 286 million dollars (£220 million) posted this time last year.
The company’s net loss also dropped from 350 million dollars (£270 million) this time last year to 192 million (£148 million) in the last quarter.
However, the number of people using the app every day remained at 186 million, the same as the previous quarter by down by one million on the same quarter a year ago.
Snapchat themselves described the numbers as “flat”.
The firm’s founder and chief executive Evan Spiegel said: “In 2018, we focused on building a foundation to scale the business over the long-term by driving sustainable product innovation, scaling our advertising platform, and hiring the leadership team that will help us achieve our future goals.
“We ended the year with user engagement stabilising and have started rolling out the new version of our Android application to a small percentage of our community.
“We are substantially closer to achieving profitability, as we have maintained a relatively flat cost structure across the past five quarters while growing full-year revenue 43% year over year.”
The firm also pointed to its position as the apparent social network of choice among younger app users as a highlight, the results revealing Snapchat reached 70% of the total 13 to 34-year-old population in the United States.
Snapchat has faced intense competition from Facebook and its family of apps, most notably Instagram, which has aggressively mimicked a number of Snapchat features over the last two years.
