Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel attends the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Media & Technology Conference at Sun Valley Resort on July 9, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
snap Shares rose more than 2% in after-hours trading Wednesday after Snapchat’s parent company reported fourth-quarter results that beat revenue.
The company also announced a $500 million share repurchase program.
Here’s how the company performed compared to Wall Street expectations:
Earnings per share: 3 cents. This number is not comparable to analyst expectations. Revenue: $1.72 billion vs. $1.7 billion expected, according to LSEG Global daily active users: 474 million vs. 478 million expected, according to StreetAccount Global average revenue per user (ARPU): $3.62 vs. $3.56 expected, according to StreetAccount
The social media company said first-quarter revenue will be in the range of $1.5 billion to $1.53 billion, lower than the $1.55 billion expected by analysts.
Snap’s fourth-quarter revenue was up 10% year over year, and net income was $45.2 million, up nearly 400% from $9.1 million a year earlier.
Snap said its fourth-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) was $358 million, beating Street accounts’ expectations of $300 million.
The company also said first-quarter adjusted EBITDA will be between $170 million and $190 million. This midpoint is higher than StreetAccount’s estimate of $178 million.
In a letter to investors, Snap’s global DAU fell by 3 million people in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter, which the company attributed to cutting marketing spending “to focus on more profitable growth.”
Additionally, Snap said that due to Australia’s social media minimum age laws, the company “implemented platform-level age verification” in the country in the fourth quarter, resulting in “approximately 400,000 account deletions.”
The company said DAU in the North American region was 94 million, lower than the 97 million expected by Wall Street.
Snap shares fell slightly in after-hours trading as analysts asked company executives about potential regulatory challenges during an earnings call.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said on the company’s earnings call that the regulatory environment is “clearly very advanced right now in court system efforts that will further restrict the use of Snapchat in our community.” Still, he said the company’s global ad sales from users under 18 are “insignificant.”
“Given the revenue generation potential of the business going forward, we are not too concerned about changes in the regulatory environment,” Spiegel said.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel will be interviewed by CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on Thursday at 11 a.m. ET.
Snap said in the letter that it plans to focus on expanding its subscription-related services, including Snapchat+ and its recently debuted Memories Storage Plans. The company said total subscribers to these services rose 71% year over year to 24 million in the fourth quarter.
“Certainly memory storage plans have been a big driver of the subscriber growth we’ve seen recently,” Spiegel said.
Last week, Snap announced the creation of a wholly owned subsidiary, Spex, which will develop and sell Snap’s augmented reality glasses.
“We’re very excited about what’s going to happen this year with the launch of Speck and obviously the evolution of Speck from the research and development stage towards broader consumer adoption,” Spiegel said of the company’s next AR glasses, which are expected to debut in 2026.
Because the company’s AR glasses “appeal to a different audience than Snapchat’s core audience,” “developing a separate brand identity for Specs will be very important to us,” Spiegel said.
Spiegel said that while “there may be opportunities to raise additional capital” for the company’s AR glasses efforts in the future, Snap will need to “balance” outside investment with its own “ownership and potential dilution.”
WATCH: CEO Evan Spiegel snapped with AR glasses.
