Rosy ad-market filter, activated

Now Snap, back to reality. The Evan Spiegel-led camera company and social app got a reality check of its own yesterday, after reporting weaker-than-expected earnings. Here are some highlights:

• Snap generated $1.13 billion in revenue this past quarter, a 6% increase from a year earlier. And while growth is usually good (in the market sense), it missed analysts’ expectations – and this is the first time it’s dipped into single digits since the company went public in 2017.
• Its net loss jumped 400% to $360 million, partly due to a $155 million restructuring charge.
• And according to an investor letter yesterday, Snap is assuming no revenue growth this quarter from the year-ago period​, even though it’s seen about 9% growth thus far​. Analysts are expecting a ~7% increase, the WSJ reports.

But on the bright side – its new $3.99/month subscription service, Snapchat+, has reached more than 1.5 million paying subscribers just three months after launching.

📸 Big picture: Shares of Snap crackled and dropped more than 27% in after-hours trading. The company’s stock has lost 87% of its value over the past 13 months, granting it the honor of being the only US company worth more than $100 billion a year ago that’s now worth less than $20 billion, according to Bloomberg.

+In the know: Snap is the first major player in the digital ads space to report earnings. Shares of other companies that sell online ads also fell yesterday, with Meta down ~4%, Alphabet down 2%, and Pinterest dropping ~8%. But we’ll get more intel on the ads market when Alphabet and Meta report earnings next week.