Popular social media application Snapchat announced a remarkably strong quarter on Tuesday, resulting in shares surging during after-hours trading. The company announced that Snapchat users increased by 8 per cent, making up 203 million users.
Its success has been put down to new augmented reality tools, an upgrade of its Android application and positive expansion into new markets, driving the company’s growth in the second quarter of 2019.
Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO said that the positive growth is a result of several “transitions” the company completed over the past 18 months. He spoke of his wish to capitalise on the momentum gained while also driving progress in many areas.
Snapchat’s revenue increased by a staggering 48 per cent in the second quarter when compared with the same period in 2018, to $388m (€348m).
Despite predictions that Snapchat would increase users by 2 million, the company surpassed all expectations with 13 million more users signing up, an increase of 8 per cent. For the second quarter of 2019, Snapchat posts increase to reach 3.5 billion each day.
Much of its success in attracting users is being attributed to its augmented reality feature while its ‘gender swap’ feature has driven user interaction, said Mr Spiegel.
Snapchat has secured a commendable turnaround after it lost $1 billion (€897 million) of its market value in 2018 as a result of a less-than-pleasantly received platform redesign, hitting a low of $4.99 (€4.48) per share on 21st December 2019.
Following Mr Spiegel’s remarks Snap Inc, the company behind Snapchat, enjoyed a boost of more than 12 per cent in its share value during after-hours trading, nearing $16.60 (€14.91).
