Snap turned in its highest-ever quarterly revenue in Q2 — more than doubling to $982 million — and netted 13 million daily users, the best growth rate in four years.
Snapchat’s daily active users average 293 million in the second quarter, an increase of 55 million, or 23%, year-over-year. The continued growth shows that Snap is continuing to maintain momentum after seeing huge growth in 2020 fueled by the COVID pandemic. Snap had previously indicated DAUs would reach 290 million in Q2.
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The company narrowed its net loss to $152 million in Q2 2021, an improvement of 53% compared with the year prior. Adjusted EBITDA improved 223% to $117 million in the most recent quarter. Earnings per share on an adjusted basis were 10 cents. Wall Street analysts on average expected Q2 revenue of $845 million and an adjusted net loss of 1 cent per share, per financial data provider Refinitiv.
Shares of Snap were up 13% in after-hours trading.
“Our second quarter results reflect the broad-based strength of our business, as we grew both revenue and daily active users at the highest rates we have achieved in the past four years,” said Evan Spiegel, Snap’s CEO, in announcing the results. “We are pleased by the progress our team is making with the development of our augmented reality platform, and we are energized by the many opportunities to grow our community and business around the world.”
The company said daily active users for Spotlight, its user-generated section of the app for TikTok-like video clips, grew 49% in the second quarter, though it didn’t break out a DAU number. Snap said average daily content submissions to Spotlight more than tripled in Q2 and daily time spent per user in the U.S; grew by more than 60% quarter-over-quarter.
In May, the company said that since the November launch of Snapchat Spotlight, it had paid out more than $130 million in total to a group of more than 5,400 creators.
At its analyst day in February, Snap said it expects to achieve annual revenue increases of at least 50% over the next several years, a projection Spiegel said does not factor in assumptions about the growth of Snapchat’s user base.
Two months ago, Snap made its biggest-ever acquisition with a deal worth more than $500 million for U.K.-based WaveOptics, the company that makes the augmented-reality displays for Snap’s new Spectacles smart glasses.