Snapchat User Growth Slows In Q2

Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has announced its second-quarter financial results, including an operating cash flow increase by $29 million to $67 million and an influx of 17 percent more daily active users for a total of 35 million more daily users, the company said in a press release.

While making gains in daily users for a total of 238 million, the 17 percent uptick is lower than the 20 percent user gain in the first quarter and slightly below the analysts’ anticipated 239 million user total.

The popular social media app saw a revenue increase of 17 percent to $454 million in the second quarter, as opposed to last year. There was also a net loss of $326 million this year as opposed to $255 million last year.

The adjusted EBITDA was $96 million for the second quarter, according to the release, up from $79 million in 2019.

CEO Evan Spiegel said the company had been able to continue thriving amid the pandemic.

“I am proud of our team for innovating on new experiences for our community and driving value for our partners, demonstrating the importance of our service in people’s lives,” he said, according to the release. “We are grateful that the resilience of our business has allowed us to remain focused on our future growth and opportunity.”

Some of the innovations he mentioned are listed in the release, including an augmented reality (AR) program. Snap added new camera partners in PlantSnap, Dog Scanner and Nutrition Scanner “to provide more experiences,” the company said, and the company added a voice scan option allowing users to activate AR lenses with their voices.

The company also added a local lenses option to allow “shared and persistent” virtual reality experiences worldwide, and a music lenses option to add songs to the lenses, the release said.

Other innovations include a Camera Kit for developers to access AR features; SnapML, which lets lens creators use machine learning (ML) models; and a partnership with Google’s Depth API to enable new depth options for lens templates.

In January, Snap spent $166 million and acquired the Ukraine-based AI Factory, which was instrumental in helping it provide a new video feature called Cameos, which lets users take selfies and then turn them into animated short videos.

Snap saw more users engaging with its Discover content, too, including a 45 percent increase in users watching Shows since last year, and a 40 percent increase in users over 35 years old engaging with Discover content, according to the release.