Despite Snap Inc. (NASDAQ:SNAP) beating expectations for its much-anticipated Q3 2019 earnings report by one cent a share and posting a record high user count, the technology company that owns popular social media app Snapchat has slumped in extended hours trading. The social media giant has seen its stock price more than triple from this point last year; however, it still sits several dollars below its initial public offering price of $17.00 a share. After a host of shake ups in its top brass and fierce competition from other social media apps, Snap has certainly improved its fortunes, but analysts and insiders still doubt the long-term viability of the company.
The stock had opened at $14.89 a share Tuesday morning before declining to $14.00 at market close and $13.54 in extended trading. Predictions from industry analysts had suggested a non-GAAP net loss of five cents per share alongside revenue projections of $435 million. Snap beat both; it beat earnings for yet another quarter with an adjusted net loss of four cents per share while posting revenue of $446 million. This compares to net losses of six cents per share for Q2 2019 and 10 cents per share for Q3 2019, suggesting an improving trajectory. In addition, Snap's reported record high user count of 210 million regular users exceeded the 206 million projected users that many in the industry had anticipated, a positive sign of growth for a company with many questions as to its longer-term prospects.
However, the rising share price and steadily rising user count does not guarantee a healthy future for Snap. The social media app environment is rapidly changing and better-than-average earnings reports give only an incomplete picture of the situation. Snapchat has faced intense competition from Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) Instagram and the Chinese upstart TikTok. Both of these services are backed with a much higher amount of institutional capital than Snapchat. Snapchat gains a relatively small amount of revenue per user, with Snapchat having roughly $2.12 in revenue for each user it has. Facebook, on the other hand, has more than $10 in revenue for each of its users. There are concerns that the features that most users take part in are not the features that make the most revenue for Snap. The news features, which come with the most ad revenue, are not used by many of the users that use Snapchat's video and picture sending features. While much remains to be seen about the future of this company, there is still a lot to be excited about in terms of what Snap could become.