It’s here! Snap — which confidentially filed for its IPO late last year — has released its public filing through the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This is another incremental step in the process of going public, but it’s probably the most important because we’re finally getting our first glimpse at the financial guts of the company. Snapchat has gone from a zeitgeist-y app among a younger audience to one with more than 150 million daily users — and one with a strong pitch to advertisers based on the engagement of the app.
Snap is expected to go public at a valuation north of $25 billion in early March, making it not only the first tech IPO of the year but also one of the largest in a while. That means Snap is not only setting itself up as a bellwether for future consumer tech IPOs, but also for the tech IPO market in general. We’re also getting a glimpse into what Snap is acknowledging as existential threats for the company, which could give us a sense of where things are headed for ad-driven companies in public markets.
But, now we have the data, and we can get a better sense of where the app is going.We’re updating this post as we get more information, so be sure to refresh periodically. Let’s get started!
Revenue
Last year, leaked documents revealed that Snapchat would generate $350 million in revenue for 2016 and was projecting $1 billion in revenue for 2017. It looks like the company came in ahead of the projections for last year at around $400 million. That’s up from $59 million in revenue generated in 2015 — a nearly 6x jump.
In the fourth quarter last year, Snap brought in $165.7 million in revenue, up from $32.7 million in revenue in the fourth quarter in 2015. Its losses, however, are widening rapidly. In Q4 the company lost around $170 million, up from losses of around $98 million in the fourth quarter of 2015. On the year, Snap lost around $515 million, up from losses of $373 million in 2015.
Not unexpected, Snap has had to invest heavily not only in research and product development but also infrastructure. An app that prides itself on engagement through the use of video and photos is going to come with a lot of costs pertaining to running the actual service and keeping it from crashing.
Engagement
For those 161 million daily active users, Snap makes about a dollar apiece. But as to be expected, Snap’s revenue per user is leagues ahead in North America compared to the rest of the world. That might not be all that surprising, given that it’s still an early advertising product and it hasn’t quite locked down monetization outside of the U.S. Here’s the quick breakdown:
Users
Snap has stressed its focus on daily active users (DAUs) as its pitch to investors and advertisers. That’s partly because it doesn’t have the same insane scale of Facebook — in terms of DAUs or MAUs. The company is trying to convince Wall Street that its engagement metrics make it a much more attractive platform. So, it might not have huge numbers, but with more than 150 million DAUs and stronger engagement than other platforms, it may turn out to be a more intriguing use of advertising budgets.
The company says it has 161 million daily active users, up 48% year-over-year from 107 million last year. The majority of its use base is naturally in North America, with 69 million DAUs. Europe accounts for 53 million DAUs, there are 39 million DAUs in the rest of the world.
Diving deeper into international, it looks like the company’s growth across all three categories is pretty similar. While the U.S. is not growing as quickly year-over-year, all three categories that Snap has broken out are growing more than 40% year-over-year. We do, indeed, see slowing growth however across all categories if you look at a more quarter-over-quarter basis — especially beyond Europe and North America, where there was no change.
We’re updating as we get more information.
Featured Image: Snap