Snap Inc. shareholders are enjoying a nice Wednesday morning, with the Snapchat parent company’s stock jumping 15% following a strong Q3 report and the announcement of a share buyback plan.
The Los Angeles-based company’s stock hit $12.54 per share about two hours into trading on Wednesday. Snap’s increase is a welcome sight for longterm shareholders, considering the stock is still down about 22% since the start of 2024.
Snap’s big morning comes a day after it reported adding 11 million daily users during the third quarter, pushing Snapchat to 443 million daily users overall. Analysts had expected the company to report about 441 million daily users, per Yahoo Finance. Third quarter revenue of $1.37 billion, meanwhile, edged past what analysts were looking for.
And perhaps most notably, Snap announced a $500 million stock repurchase program. The company, following Wednesday morning’s stock increase, is worth $20.8 billion.
Snap, similar to how Alphabet on Wednesday credited artificial intelligence with driving better YouTube recommendations in Q3, also gave a shoutout to AI in its earnings report.
“Our investments in AI and AR are powering new creative experiences for our community and driving innovation across our advertising platform, underpinning our longterm growth opportunity.” CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement.
The company said Snapchat+, its $3.99 per month subscription service that offers exclusive features, is up to 12 million users; in August, the company had reported 11 million paying subscribers.
Meta, the parent company of rival Instagram, is set to report its own Q3 earnings on Wednesday afternoon.