How Much Is Snapchat Worth?

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Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app owned by Snap Inc. The app has seen its fair share of challenges in recent years — including a Federal Trade Commission charge that Snapchat misled users about its noted feature that photos and videos disappear “forever” once sent — but it is still one of the most popular social media apps among young people, averaging 347 million daily users who spend an average of more than 30 minutes per day on the app.

Review the figures below to learn more about the company’s market value and find out if it’s a smart investment for you.

Snapchat’s Market Cap: $17.13B

When investors want to know the size of the company, they look at market capitalization, or the total dollar worth of the company’s stock. To find this number, they multiply the number of outstanding shares by the current market price of one share. Snapchat’s market cap stands at $17.13 billion.

Market cap is just one figure investors use to get a general idea of how Snapchat stock should be priced. The fact that the company has been losing money on an annual basis for the last four years might be of concern.

Snapchat’s Net Worth: $1.07B

Although market cap gives you a sense of what the market values a company at, the number can be based on hundreds of factors, big and small, that boil down to market volatility. The GOBankingRates Evaluation of a company’s net worth, however, considers figures like assets and revenue, using a company’s income statements and balance sheets for the last three fiscal years to draw a conclusion of its value.

Based on Snapchat’s revenue and profits from the last three years, as well as its assets and liabilities, Snapchat has a valuation of $1.07 billion.

Snap Faces User Experience Challenges

Snap Inc. went public in March 2017, raising $3.4 billion for its initial public offering. Its main products are cameras, most notably the one featured on its messaging app, and Spectacles, which manufactures eyewear that doubles as cameras. The company also generates revenue through Snapchat and augmented reality advertising.

Although the company got off to a strong start with its IPO, its ability to generate profit has been less than reliable. The company has been losing money for years due to operating costs, legal expenses and lackluster user growth.

As far as market forces go, Snapchat’s user experience has, in the past, incurred the wrath of celebrities like Rihanna and Kylie Jenner. Jenner’s Snapchat diss in February 2018, for example, led to the loss of $1 billion in market value for Snap Inc.

Parental Oversight Concerns

Last year, Snapchat, like other social apps, including TikTok, came under pressure to take more proactive steps to stem the use of its platform for illicit drug sales and to protect minor users against exploitation by adult predators.

In response, Snap announced in October 2021 that it would roll out new family-friendly features designed to “give parents more visibility into who their teenage users may be talking to on Snapchat and their privacy settings, among other things,” TechCrunch reported.

The new Family Center, as it has been dubbed, hasn’t been released yet, but TechCrunch, reporting on screenshots it obtained from the product intelligence company Watchful, said the feature lets parents see who their teens are friends with on Snapchat and who they’ve chatted with over the past week. Although parents can’t see the content of those exchanges, they will be able to help their teen report abuse and harassment.

Snapchat said last year that it reaches 75% of millennials and Gen Z. It was the most popular social network among teens last year, with 35% using Snapchat compared to 30% using TikTok and 22% using Instagram, according to Statista.

Snapchat saw a 20% increase in active daily users in 2021. As of January of this year, Snapchat was the 12th-most popular social network overall, with 557 million monthly active users, Statista reported in a separate ranking.

Snapchat Has Its First Profitable Quarter in 2021

Snapchat experienced some ups and downs last year, due in part to changes Apple made to mobile user privacy settings, which disrupted mobile advertising when the changes rolled out with an iOS update. However, the company ended the year on a positive note, with earnings, revenue and user growth beating analyst estimates, CNBC reported. The fourth quarter also was Snapchat’s first profitable one, on a net income basis, since going public.

Last year was important for Snapchat in terms of its content, products and partnerships, as well. The platform’s Discover feed now streams content from creators like NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, Disney and Universal Music in addition to original programming.

The company also expanded its mapping tools, Sounds, Lenses and AR experiences. In addition, Snapchat expanded offerings for advertisers, enabling measurement solutions, rolling out multi-format ad delivery and launching Shopping Lenses and a try-on interface for AR e-commerce.

Snapchat in 2022

Snapchat released its second-quarter 2022 earnings on July 21. Daily active users increased 18%, to 347 million, with growth since the previous quarter and year over year in North America, Europe and “Rest of the World,” according to a Snap press release.

That result exceeded a StreetAccount forecast of 344.2 million, according to CNBC. Snap missed earnings-per-share and revenue estimates with a loss of 2 cents per share vs. 1 cent forecast and revenue of $1.11 billion vs. $1.14 billion forecast, sending the stock reeling in after-hours trading.

As GOBankingRates reported, Evan Spiegel, SNAP CEO, said in the earnings release that “while the continued growth of our community increases the long-term opportunity for our business, our financial results for Q2 do not reflect our ambition.” Spiegel said the company is “evolving our business and strategy to reaccelerate revenue growth, including innovating on our products, investing heavily in our direct response advertising business, and cultivating new sources of revenue to help diversify our topline growth.”

Snap’s press release also highlighted achievements and successes from the second quarter:

• Investment in the augmented reality platform with product updates and expansions.

• Growth in content offerings, including the introduction of a new slate of Snap Originals

• Product and partner expansion, including a deal with Live Nation to develop interactive AR Lens experiences for music festival attendees, and the rollout of Snapchat+, a paid subscription service that gives users access to exclusive, experimental and pre-release features.

Snap declined to issue guidance for the third quarter, citing “uncertainties related to the operating environment.”

Snapchat’s CEO

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel received $3,290,616 in total compensation in 2021. Like other tech execs, he receives a salary of just $1 a year. The remainder is paid as other forms of compensation, such as pension — but not equity.

Spiegel’s net worth dropped from $11 billion in 2021 to $6.1 billion in early 2022, according to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. It has continued to decline and now sits at $2.7 billion.

Daria Uhlig contributed to the reporting for this article.

Methodology: The GOBankingRates Evaluation assesses a company’s net worth based on the company’s total assets, total liabilities, and revenue and net income from the last three years. Base value is established by subtracting total liabilities from total assets from the company’s last full fiscal year. Income value is established by taking the average of the revenue from the last three full fiscal years, plus 10 times the average of the net profits from the last three full fiscal years, and then calculating the average of those two figures. The final GOBankingRates Evaluation number is the sum of the base value and the income value.

Editorial Note: This content is not provided by any entity covered in this article. Any opinions, analyses, reviews, ratings or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author alone and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any entity named in this article.

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