The share price of Snap Inc. has been largely on an upswing since late April after the tech company reported encouraging first-quarter earnings that included increased adjusted net income and revenue.

Shares in the Santa Monica-based technology company that owns social media app Snapchat closed at $11.40 on April 25. The next day it increased almost 28% to close at $14.55 and more than doubled the previous day’s trading volume. 

Snap shares closed at $15.61 on June 13, a 3% decrease in value from the start of the year when it closed at $16.14. That stock price, however, represented a 51% increase over the close of $10.32 one year ago.

Snap, however, lags behind some other social media companies.

Meta Platforms Inc., in Menlo Park and which owns Facebook, for example, had a closing price on June 13 of $504.10, while Pinterest Inc. in San Francisco closed at $43.23.

While Snap’s stock price has increased, it still lags behind when it reached highs in the $50 to $70 range and even briefly more than $80 a share in 2021.

Earnings report shows growth

Snap reported after the market closed on April 25 adjusted net income of $49 million (3 cents a share) for the quarter ending March 31, compared with adjusted net income of $20 million (1 cent) in the same period of the previous year. Revenue increased by 21% from the first quarter of the prior year to $1.2 billion.

Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, said during a conference call with analysts to discuss the first quarter earnings that the company remains committed to executing against its three strategic priorities: accelerating and diversifying its revenue growth, growing its community and deepening their engagement and leading in augmented reality.

Spiegel called the first priority – revenue diversification – the most important one set for this year.

“We have made significant progress to start the year with revenue growing 21% year-over-year, an acceleration of 16 percentage points over the prior quarter growth rate, which was driven by improvements we have made to our advertising platform and an increase in demand for our advertising solutions,” Spiegel said.

He also attributed the revenue increase to improvements in the operating environment.

“Our large hard-to-reach audience, brand-safe environment, and continued innovation and progress on our advertising platform have made us a valuable partner for businesses that want to reach the next generation,” Spiegel said during the call.

The second strategic priority, designing innovative products and services that enhance people’s relationships with their friends, family and the world continues to drive the growth of Snap’s global community, Spiegel continued.

“In Q1, we reached 422 million daily active users, an increase of 39 million or 10% year-over-year,” he said.

Spiegel called augmented reality the most “profound and meaningful” improvement the company has ever worked on.

On average, over 300 million people engage with augmented reality every single day on Snapchat, Spiegel said.

Having a large, engaged AR audience and creator community enables Snap to innovate rapidly, Spiegel added.

“We believe that our large and growing community, an innovative and engaging service that continues to evolve, and a strong balance sheet with positive free cash flow positions us well to achieve our long-term vision for augmented reality,” Spiegel said, “which we believe will be one of the most meaningful advancements in computing that the world has ever seen.”