Snap’s 59% Post-Earnings Gain Still Leaves Stock in Red for Year

(Bloomberg) -- Snap Inc. surged 59% Friday, but even that won't be enough to recoup the social media stock's year-to-date losses.

The shares soared as high as $40.65 after the Snapchat parent gave a quarterly sales update that left analysts positively surprised, but that was still well below the $47.03 where they ended 2021.

The stock is rebounding from a 24% plunge on Thursday that was triggered by concern that a growth slowdown at Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc. would prove to be industry-wide. Large-cap technology stocks have also been hit more broadly in recent weeks on concern around a tightening of U.S. monetary policy.

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“Simply put, Snap results were better than feared,” KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson wrote in a note to clients. The firm is seeing “solid” revenue growth, while improvements in advertising efficacy and monetization of features like Spotlight and Maps offer potential upside drivers, Patterson said.

The stock closed at $38.91 on Friday. The results were announced after markets closed on Thursday.

Snap's longer-term losses are even more severe. The stock is down about 48% since Oct. 21, when the firm issued financial guidance that missed Wall Street targets, warning that changes to Apple Inc.'s data collection rules and supply chain disruption were weighing on advertising spending.

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