Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

investor.snap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 294 posts

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#221

Post by tacostakohashi »

cavisne wrote: post #215
chollida1 wrote: post #7

Some quick highlights as to why the stock is being punished. > Adjusted Ebitda Loss $188.2M, Est. Loss $176.9M > 1Q Daily Active Users 166M, Est. 168M > 1Q Rev. $149.6M, Est. $158.6M > 1Q Loss/Shr $2.31 I'm guessing the big issue is the miss on Daily active users. This is the same thing that caused the street ot hammer twitter. Rule of thumb for non profitable tech companies.... If you are a company that isn't making…

How is DAU audited and enforced, is there a standard? Things like ebitda have a pretty standard audit procedure, there are bank statements and receipts that an auditor can check, and they can investigate variances. DAU doesn't seem to have a precise definition, and how do we know the method for collecting this metric is accurate? I've personally stuffed up this kind of collection before, and once you do it's very har…

No standard, it's common for companies to make up their own (ridiculous) metrics defined however they want.

At the end of the day it's just something that the board have defined and decided to use, and if they mess up the collection then it's embarrassing for them, they lose credibility, and investors will sell or install a new board.

Even for things that have (more) precise definitions like profit or earnings, how does one know that the numbers are not deliberately or accidentally incorrect? You just have to trust the board, accountants, and auditors to do their job, and if you don't you shouldn't own the stock.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#222

Post by nebabyte »

theprop wrote: post #177
us0r wrote: 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.

How many people does it take to make a photograph disappear? 2360 if you're Snapchat!

Streisand and Beyonce could've used them.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#223

Post by abritinthebay »

nostrademons wrote: post #201
elgenie wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a particularly good thing from Wall St's perspective. Snap's path to monetization runs through celebrities, influencers and businesses.

Why? Their monetization strategy so far has been brand advertisement interspersed as vertical video ads between Stories. This doesn't require any particular kind of content, only that they can hold your attention for 10 seconds or so while they show you an advertisement.

And their monitization strategy so far has led to larger losses than expected, less revenue per user, and slower user growth.

It might make for a better user experience but that's not good for a free service

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#224

Post by imdisappoint »

dang wrote: post #209
imdisappoint wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take Uber or Lyft, whichever is cheapest. The ride "sharing" industry is a brilliant innovation, but I seriously doubt it can support Uber's valuation.

Would you please not create bulk accounts to post with here? Throwaways are fine if there's some specific purpose, e.g. something personally sensitive, but we ban users who do it routinely. Hacker News is a community. You don't have to use your real name, of course, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that woul…

What is a bulk account? I don't see mention of it on the site guidelines or anywhere else.

I personally don't want to have an identity on the web. If that's against the rules could you kindly point it out to me? That's definitely something I'd be interested in learning about.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#225

Post by mbarq »

puranjay wrote: post #202
chollida1 wrote: post #7

Some quick highlights as to why the stock is being punished. > Adjusted Ebitda Loss $188.2M, Est. Loss $176.9M > 1Q Daily Active Users 166M, Est. 168M > 1Q Rev. $149.6M, Est. $158.6M > 1Q Loss/Shr $2.31 I'm guessing the big issue is the miss on Daily active users. This is the same thing that caused the street ot hammer twitter. Rule of thumb for non profitable tech companies.... If you are a company that isn't making…

As someone who never has and likely will never use Snapchat (tried it once, didn't see the value), Snapchat has a major problem that Facebook doesn't: it can't attract older users. My parents, older relatives...everyone I know is on Facebook or Whatsapp. But they will never use Snapchat. Snapchat's users are only going to be younger. This makes them an attractive investment 10 years down the line, but not right now.

That's like saying the problem with water is that it makes you less thirsty.

Snap's shtick is that it's not Facebook, that your parents aren't on it, that your creepy uncle's friend who came to the bbq last 4th of July is NOT there and that Snap is not going to geo-recommend you add him as a friend...that's the point and the main reason it got so popular so quick.

How you monetize that? Dunno, but it will sure make your app popular.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#226

Post by kuschku »

bsder wrote: post #87
aaron-lebo wrote: post #58

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.

> It's gonna be hard to find innovation when purchasing and cloning are the way to do business. Welcome to Microsoft circa 1990. People forget how much oxygen Microsoft could suck out of a space simply by mentioning they were going to develop something.

Or, as I mentioned (and got downvoted for yesterday), Google can.

This is a very scary situation, where patents were originally developed to prevent exactly this.

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#227

Post by l33tbro »

slackoverflower wrote: post #112
peacetreefrog wrote: post #92

It still seems overvalued. What would you rather own? Snapchat -- which, after dropping 23% today has a market cap of 21.5B. Or ALL of... Yelp - 2.21B GoPro - 1.21B FitBit - 1.38B Groupon - 2.01B Twitter - 13.59B Sonic - 1.27B ...for a total of 21.67B

I would most certainly buy $SNAP over every one of these companies. People don't get it. For everyone between the ages of 13 to 26, Snapchat is their only social network, their only messaging app, their go to camera! That is inherently more value that any of those companies combined.

So it's the AOL messenger, ICQ, Myspace, etc of 2017? What makes you so confident that Snapchat has the characteristics of a consolidating social platform like Facebook - in that its current user base will remain loyal to it as they age?

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#229

Post by Fricken »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #218
Fricken wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you understand what action camera's are for, they're not for late night events, that's what the camera on your phone is good for, and you already have one of those. I've taken them Rock climbing, I took them out on a trail ride, I took them to the zoo, Everybody in my town is hockey crazy, I got shots of fans going nuts after a game. I shot a little cooking video, and they were actually coolest for that…

How can you create "any type of instructional video" when the Snaps are limited to 30 seconds.

Although Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s disagreed about how exactly to view montage, Sergei Eisenstein marked a note of accord in "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" when he noted that montage is "the nerve of cinema", and that "to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema". Its influence is far reaching commercially, academically, and politically. Alfred Hitchcock cites editing (and montage indirectly) as the lynchpin of worthwhile filmmaking. In fact, montage is demonstrated in the majority of narrative fiction film available today. Post-Soviet film theories relied extensively on montage’s redirection of film analysis toward language, a literal grammar of film. A semiotic understanding of film, for example, is indebted to and in contrast with Sergei Eisenstein’s wanton transposition of language “in ways that are altogether new.” While several Soviet filmmakers, such as Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, Esfir Shub and Vsevolod Pudovkin put forth explanations of what constitutes the montage effect, Eisenstein's view that "montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots" wherein "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other" has become most widely accepted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_montage_theory

Re: Snap Inc. Reports First Quarter 2017 Results

#230

Post by poopsicle »

askafriend wrote: post #110
monkmartinez wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not hate and you may well be right about the scale and reach of facebook right now. However, I think many people over-estimate the real utility of Facebook. That is, lives would not materially change for the better or worse if facebook fell off the face of the internet tomorrow, imo. Emotional reactions aside, Gajendra from Nepal and Tom from California would continue with life as they did before Facebook was a…

I really do think that broad, sweeping statements like that can't be used so liberally for a product that billions of people use in so many different ways . The way we use Facebook here in America is not the same as the way people use Facebook in Thailand (in fact, it's extremely different). The way a college student uses Facebook is not the same as the way a mid 30s male uses Facebook. I'll give you one data point.…

I'm in my 30s and still in school plus other venues where Facebook is used "to get work done". Most of my family and in-laws are overseas (in different parts). I dispute your claims. I'm not convinced that fundamentally usage of Facebook is different in different parts of the world. The memes are different etc etc. But I don't see how it is a critical piece of infrastructure anywhere. I was in college when Facebook didn't exist and then it did - so I've experienced both realities. Somehow I lived. It's very useful now and students gravitate to it because it is pervasive and easy enough. Fine. But if it disappeared tomorrow.. life would go on pretty much as usual. People would find other ways to communicate.

You bloviate but your comment is without any real substance or examples.. just hand wavy people do different things with it. Still doesn't change the fact that it is just another ad and meme delivery platform that happens to have some other useful features with less pervasive but usable substitutes. School events and class.. yeah be a bit of a pita for a bit.. but there other ways if it came to that.

Post reply on HN