Snap’s Broken Dreams

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 18, 9:40AM EDT

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Snap’s Broken Dreams — © stockcam / Getty Images

Battered Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP | SNAP Price Prediction) CEO Evan Spiegel, the longtime leader of the poorly run social media company, raised the hopes of shareholders by saying the company will do well in the future. He has made similar comments before, only to disappoint investors.

According to Reuters, Spiegel said in an internal communication that Snap will have 475 million active daily users next year. Wall Street had expected less. He also said ad revenue would rise as much as 20% next year. However, that is a “stretch goal,” which means it probably will not happen. (Customers are abandoning these 25 brands.)

Snap has disappointed shareholders so often that they are beyond skeptical. Snap also has a small army of competition, including Facebook, TikTok, X and Instagram.

In the past two years, Snap’s shares have fallen almost 90%. Meta’s are flat. In the most recent quarter, Snap’s revenue dropped 4% to $1.07 billion. Social media companies are supposed to be growth businesses. Snap also lost $377 million.
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“We are excited by the progress we have made delivering increased return on investment for our advertising partners, growing our community to 397 million daily active users, and reaching more than 4 million Snapchat++ subscribers,” said Spiegel. Almost no one believed him.
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One problem Snap has is that Spiegel has been there too long. He has been at the company since 2011. Any observer of American business would say that this is too long a tenure, particularly for someone who has run a business that has fallen apart.

Spiegel may have sent a memo that might have positive news, but that does not cut it.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.