Yahoo Finance Snapchat piles on users worldwide after successful Android relaunch
Snapchat's daily active users have soared from 203m to 210m in the three months ending in September, buoyed by strong growth outside its core markets of Europe and North America.
The troubled photo-sharing app, known for its disappearing messages and popularity with young people, substantially beat Wall Street's expectations thanks to a successful relaunch of its Android smartphone version.
Shares in the app's parent company, Snap, fell slightly in after hours trading following news that its revenues had risen by 50pc year on year to $446m (£346m) and its net loss fallen from $255m in June to $227m today.
Evan Spiegel, Snap's chief executive, said the new figures put the company on a path to being profitable as early as December this year, having endured a long period of declining user numbers and a fluctuating share price.
"We delivered strong results this quarter and we are pleased that the investments we have made are continuing to drive the growth of our community and business," said Mr Spiegel.
"We are a high-growth business, with strong operating leverage, a clear path to profitability, a distinct vision for the future, the ability to invest over the long term, and a proven history of execution through the ups and downs as a public company."
Snap has suffered many hurdles since its public float in 2017, not least the battering it has taken from Facebook, whose copycat apps, Instagram Stories and Messenger Stories, now each boast more than twice as many daily users as Snapchat.
Shares in Snap tumbled by as much as 7pc earlier this month after Facebook announced a new app, called Threads, which will serve as a private inbox for users' closest Instagram friends, similar to Snapchat's "friends" tab.
But the app was buoyed in May by the success of its wildly popular new gender swapping filters, which use AI to show users what they would look like with the typical features of another gender. Its daily users jumped by 13m in the three months ending in June, the highest number seen in three years.
Mr Spiegel has pitched Snapchat as one of the few reliable ways to reach coveted younger audiences, who are much more likely to use Snapchat than traditional media such as TV and newspapers.
The company boasts that 75pc of 13- to 34-year-olds in the USE use Snapchat, and says that the average user opens it 30 times a day on average. Mr Spiegel said that the amount of time users spend on its Discover news and TV tab had also increased by 40pc year on year.
Advertisers have been slow to exploit the service, in part due to its lack of precise targeting options, a natural byproduct of its privacy-conscious design. In remarks to investors, Mr Spiegel cited this "under-monetisation", relative to the app's audience and engagement, as a "significant opportunity for ongoing revenue growth".
