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Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. I literally do not understand what they can be spending that much money on, can anyone clue

by gaius 8y ago

Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. I literally do not understand what they can be spending that much money on, can anyone clue me in? It can't be on infra and bandwidth.

joubert 8y ago
For the year ending 12/31/2017 it looks like $1.5 billion in R&D and $2 billion in sales, general, and admin expenses. https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/snap/financials?query=income-statement https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/snap/financials?query=income-s... Q1 2018 financials here: https://investor.snap.com/news-releases/2018/05-01-2018-211516272 https://investor.snap.com/news-releases/2018/05-01-2018-2115...
addicted 8y ago
For one thing, they are contractually obligated to pay Google and Amazon at least $600mm per year for the next few years. So that’s $150mm per quarter, as a minimum (if their usage doesn’t meet that amount they have to pay the difference). They are paying something like $200mm on R&D/quarter, and over $100mm on advertising and administrative each. Their “cost of revenues” (I’m not exactly sure what this means for them...I wonder if it is discounts offered to advertisers) is another $190mm. So a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there adds up to a $350mm quarterly loss. What’s interesting is their R&D expenses have dropped 20% from the year ago quarter, while their sales and marketing have increased substantially. That does not bode well for the future either in my opinion (although it’s easily arguable that even $200mm per quarter on R&D seems excesssive for Snap). Edit: I quickly compared them to Twitter, which isn’t known as the most leanest of run companies in the first place, but Twitter’s R&D costs are $139mm/quarter compared to over $200mm for SNAP. Their administraative costs are $74mm/quarter, compared to over $100mm for SNAP. How is SNAP spending so much more money than Twitter, and clearly producing a fraction of the output?

by gaius 8y ago

joubert 8y ago

For the year ending 12/31/2017 it looks like $1.5 billion in R&D and $2 billion in sales, general, and admin expenses. https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/snap/financials?query=income-statement https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/snap/financials?query=income-s... Q1 2018 financials here: https://investor.snap.com/news-releases/2018/05-01-2018-211516272 https://investor.snap.com/news-releases/2018/05-01-2018-2115...

addicted 8y ago

For one thing, they are contractually obligated to pay Google and Amazon at least $600mm per year for the next few years. So that’s $150mm per quarter, as a minimum (if their usage doesn’t meet that amount they have to pay the difference). They are paying something like $200mm on R&D/quarter, and over $100mm on advertising and administrative each. Their “cost of revenues” (I’m not exactly sure what this means for them...I wonder if it is discounts offered to advertisers) is another $190mm. So a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there adds up to a $350mm quarterly loss. What’s interesting is their R&D expenses have dropped 20% from the year ago quarter, while their sales and marketing have increased substantially. That does not bode well for the future either in my opinion (although it’s easily arguable that even $200mm per quarter on R&D seems excesssive for Snap). Edit: I quickly compared them to Twitter, which isn’t known as the most leanest of run companies in the first place, but Twitter’s R&D costs are $139mm/quarter compared to over $200mm for SNAP. Their administraative costs are $74mm/quarter, compared to over $100mm for SNAP. How is SNAP spending so much more money than Twitter, and clearly producing a fraction of the output?