Snapchat has finally made investor concerns disappear.
For the first time since going public in March, Snapchat’s parent company posted quarterly sales and user growth that beat Wall Street’s estimates.
The stock popped as much as 25% in after hours trading Tuesday following the results. If the gains hold, Snap’s stock could open above its IPO price of $17 a share for the first time since July.
Snap’s sales climbed to $285 million in the fourth quarter, up 72% from the same period a year earlier. Sales for the year as a whole doubled to $825 million.
The company also showed signs of accelerated user growth. It added 8.9 million daily active users in the final three months of the year, more than any other quarter of the year.
Snap now has 187 million users, which still puts it far behind rivals like Twitter and Facebook’s Instagram.
“Our work during 2017 is proof that we aren’t afraid to make big changes for the long-term success of our business,” Evan Spiegel, the cofounder and CEO of Snap, said in a statement.
After struggling to grow its audience throughout the year, Snap unveiled a significant redesign in November intended to make its messaging service more intuitive to users.
Among other features, the redesign promised to have a clearer delineation between content from friends and content from publishers.
