Live data from Hacker News

Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

investor.snap.com

191–200 of 294 posts

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#192

Cash and equivalents went up by $1.3Billion - they're just stocking money in a cookie jar and declaring it as a loss? Great company for stock owners!

What do you think a public offering is for if not to raise cash? It's not like they are giving it back as a dividend, so I'm not sure what the "stock owners" are getting that is great? If the company grows, shareholders might reap some rewards. Because it is a gamble, shouldn't the shareholders profit from their belief in the company whereas most comments here decry Snap as worthless? Please pick a side.

[deleted]

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#193
post #9

Is there any public company that releases earnings in realtime rather than quarterly and/or annually? Has this ever been tried? Is there any rational behind earnings being reported quarterly/annually besides it being aligned with existing regulatory and accounting procedures?

If you mess up stating earnings, you go to jail.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#194
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you put it like that, you have to wonder how they have any chance at all, save some crazy pivot. From a consumer perspective, it's disappointing that Facebook controls itself and now this arena. It's gonna be hard to find innovation when purchasing and cloning are the way to do business. In some circles, having an Instagram is as expected as having Facebook, which makes abstaining difficult.

Snapchat and Instagram definitely offer in somewhat similar spaces. All the semi-famous people I follow on instagram have their snapchat username right there in the profile.

I'm sure a lot of them use Buffer or something to multipost.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#195
post #135
post #59

This is one of the ugliest financial statements I've ever seen. The multi-billion dollar loss is due mostly to stock compensation, but still their COGS or cost of revenues sold was greater than their revenues. That's probably the first time that's been seen for a sizable software company in the history of the industry. They said their revenue per DAU is $.90 and their server costs per DAU were $.60...so that means se…

"server costs" (Google Cloud) is an affordable $450 million per year commitment. They apparently have 2,360 employees doing who knows what (not growing the user base). My favorite part: "Spiegel laughed out loud when asked if he was worried about Facebook copying his features. “Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google."" We'll check back in a year to see if he feels the same way.

> They apparently have 2,360 employees doing who knows what (not growing the user base).

I don't understand what all these people do all day. Same with Twitter, they have 3860 employees according to their website. It seems like 10X as many as needed. I've worked in a few offices with less than 100 employees total, and while I have no idea what it takes to run a service with that much traffic, Snapchat runs on Google's cloud service.

> “Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google.""

Maybe it will be a classic in the same genre as Ballmers answer to what he thought about Apple's new product the iPhone.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#196
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I explained what Google can help with: searching for information, reading news, etc. He showed me that he read news and did searches for things all from within the Facebook app. This is the most frightening thing I've read in a while.

I can only imagine being frightened by this if I held a large stake in Google. Do you have a different reason?

Google sends you to other websites, Facebook tends to keep you within their walled garden/echo chamber.

Now, I am not saying google is the perfect answer, but I consider it a hell of a lot better than facebook.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#197
post #135
post #59

This is one of the ugliest financial statements I've ever seen. The multi-billion dollar loss is due mostly to stock compensation, but still their COGS or cost of revenues sold was greater than their revenues. That's probably the first time that's been seen for a sizable software company in the history of the industry. They said their revenue per DAU is $.90 and their server costs per DAU were $.60...so that means se…

"server costs" (Google Cloud) is an affordable $450 million per year commitment. They apparently have 2,360 employees doing who knows what (not growing the user base). My favorite part: "Spiegel laughed out loud when asked if he was worried about Facebook copying his features. “Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google."" We'll check back in a year to see if he feels the same way.

Don't forget that they also signed a contract with AWS for a billion over the next 5 years: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/snap-commits-spend-1b-amazon-w...

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#198

[Net Loss] primarily due to the recognition of expense related to RSUs with a performance condition satisfied on the effectiveness of the registration statement for our initial public offering. This reads like they gave out $2 BILLION in RSU's that vested if the company went public. That is a pretty sweet payday. EDIT: It is a sweet payday unless you can't sell the stock to pay the taxes owed right away. Then if SNAP…

Snapchat was known for its unusual RSUs--they would evaporate in a set amount of time unless a liquidity event happened. Apparently, if there's what the IRS considers a substantial risk of loss, they're considered unvested and you don't have to pay taxes on them. It looks to me like the situation worked the same on the accounting side of things.

Can you go into more detail on this, or just provide a link/documentation so I can also look into it for our own startup? Sounds very cool/interesting.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#199

I wonder if they're hobbling their user growth by not having some alternative lite app. I've come to associate their app with poor performance and battery drain while Facebook apps are relatively fine, perhaps with the exception of Messenger which they're slowly releasing Messenger Lite as an alternative.

Oh, since when has Facebook apps been better? I uninstalled them when I saw how much battery they were using without me even opening them.

Hmm, that isn't the first time I've heard of that, but the Facebook app only constitutes about 3% battery usage for me. Either way for Facebook and Instagram you can just use the mobile web versions, but Snapchat doesn't have such an official site.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#200
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"server costs" (Google Cloud) is an affordable $450 million per year commitment. They apparently have 2,360 employees doing who knows what (not growing the user base). My favorite part: "Spiegel laughed out loud when asked if he was worried about Facebook copying his features. “Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google."" We'll check back in a year to see if he feels the same way.

> They apparently have 2,360 employees doing who knows what (not growing the user base). I don't understand what all these people do all day. Same with Twitter, they have 3860 employees according to their website. It seems like 10X as many as needed. I've worked in a few offices with less than 100 employees total, and while I have no idea what it takes to run a service with that much traffic, Snapchat runs on Google'…

A large % of that number is in sales.

Unfortunately B2B sales is still very much people driven. Lots of calls, emails, meetings x 10 until you close.

Post reply on HN