Run the Numbers: Which Social Media Giant Is Winning This Earnings Season?
Samantha McDonald
Business Editor
In our new column, Run the Numbers, FN unpacks the data that’s driving top retail trends in the industry.
The past two weeks have seen the release of second-quarter earnings reports from four of the biggest social media companies in the country: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Snapchat.
Reflecting a shift in consumer preferences, the latest spate of financial reports address Pinterest’s growing focus on ad spend as well as Twitter’s crackdown on suspicious behavior on its platform and more. FN breaks down the four networking giants’ financial results and the issues they’re tackling moving into the next quarter.
Reported: July 24
Earnings: 91 cents per share versus estimates of $1.88
Profit: $2.62 billion, down 49% year-over-year
Sales: $16.88 billion, up 28% year-over-year
Active users: 2.41 billion monthly
What the CEO said: “We had a strong quarter and our business and community continue to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg. “We are investing in building stronger privacy protections for everyone and on delivering new experiences for the people who use our services.”
Reported: Aug. 1
Earnings: Loss of 6 cents per share versus estimates of a loss of 8 cents
Profit: Loss of $1.16 billion, down 2918% year-over-year
Sales: $261.25 million, up 62% year-over-year
Active users: 300 million monthly
What the CEO said: “We constantly aim to make Pinterest more personal, relevant and useful to our users,” said Ben Silbermann. “We also continued to grow and diversify our advertiser base and improve advertisers’ ability to measure the effectiveness of their ad spend. This is part of our larger and ongoing effort to create value for businesses on Pinterest.”
Reported: July 26
Earnings: $1.58 versus estimates of 19 cents
Profit: Adjusted net income of $37.1 million
Sales: $841 million, up 18% year-over-year
Active users: 139 million daily
What the CEO said: “Health remains our top priority, and we are proud of the work we did in Q2. Our focus was on ensuring that our rules — and how we enforce them — are easy to understand,” said Jack Dorsey. “We also continued our work to proactively identify and address malicious behavior, resulting in an 18% drop in reports of spammy or suspicious behavior across all tweet detail pages, which show the replies to any given tweet on our service.”
Snapchat
Reported: July 23
Earnings: Loss of 6 cents per share versus estimates of a loss of 21 cents
Profit: $98 million, compared with a net loss of $255 million the prior year
Sales: $388 million, up 48% year-over-year
Active users: 203 million daily
What the CEO said: “The growth in our community, engagement, and revenue is the result of several transitions we completed over the past 18 months,” said Evan Spiegel. “We look forward to building on our momentum and making significant ongoing progress in each of these areas.”
Watch FN’s interview with Instagram influencer Arielle Charnas.
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