Reddit shares soar nearly 20% on first earnings report, boosting hopes of becoming the next Facebook stock
Reddit shares soar nearly 20% on first earnings report, boosting hopes of becoming the next Facebook stock
Reddit’s revenue exceeded expectations after the company diversified from advertising into AI data licensing businesses.
BY Emily Price
Reddit revealed its first quarter earnings today, its first earnings report since the company went public on March 21. Overall, the results were good for the company, surpassing analysts’ expectations for its first post-IPO report.
Reddit’s shares hit a high of $60.40 in extended trading, after closing at $49.40 in New York, thanks to its encouraging first-quarter numbers.
“It was a strong start to the year and a milestone quarter for Reddit and our communities as we debuted as a public company,” Steve Huffman, cofounder and CEO of Reddit, said in a statement along with the release of the company’s earnings after today’s closing bell.
“We see this as the beginning of a new chapter as we work toward building the next generation of Reddit,” he added.
Reddit’s highly anticipated IPO represented the first social media company to go public since Pinterest in 2019, which helped the company garner a good bit of investor and market attention.
Prior to its earnings announcement, analysts expected the company to report $214 million in revenue and a net income loss of $614.8 million for the period of January through March. Analysts also anticipated Reddit’s user numbers to be up, with an expected 77 million daily active users, a 4 million user increase from where it was in December at the end of the quarter.
Reddit outperformed a number of those estimates. The company reported a revenue increase of 48% to $243 million, nearly doubling its growth rate from the prior quarter. The company’s daily active users also surpassed expectations, now sitting at 82.7 million, an increase of 37%. The net loss was also less than anticipated, at $575.1 million.
The company did note that stock-based compensation expenses and related taxes were $595.5 million, compared to $13.2 million in the prior year, an increase that was driven by IPO charges.
Reddit shares began trading at $34 per share when the company went public in March, with investors hoping that the stock would look like Facebook’s over time. Facebook opened at $31 per share in 2012, and is currently trading at around $500 per share. Tuesday’s numbers appear to put Reddit on that trajectory.
Reddit has historically made money through advertising; however, it recently has diversified its revenue streams by boosting commerce sales on the platform and licensing some of its data to AI companies to help train LLMs. Reddit announced Tuesday that it has signed new partnerships in its emerging data licensing business, including partnerships with Cision and Google.
Along with its earnings numbers, Reddit also announced that Sarah Farrell, cofounder and managing partner of Waygrove Partnership, has joined Reddit’s board of directors. Farrell has been a board observer since 2021, and will fill a new seat on Reddit’s board.
“We believe Reddit is more important than ever before, both as an alternative to traditional social media and as we enter the AI era,” CEO Huffman said in a letter to shareholders Tuesday. “We see so much opportunity, and couldn’t be more excited about our future.”
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