Snap Market Cap Only Double Twitter’s

March 18, 2017 by Douglas A. McIntyre

The insult of the drop in Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) shares to its supporters has increased as more and more analysts downgrade the stock. The problem is so severe that Snap’s market cap is only twice that of the hulk of a social network company Twitter.

Snap’s market cap has dropped to $22 billion, which skeptics believe is still far too high. Twitter’s is at $11 billion. For people really anxious about Snap, Twitter’s shares trade at $15 now, down from $70 four and a half years ago. So, Twitter once had a market cap of $60 billion.

Snap could easily go down the same path as Twitter in terms of problems that could undermine its future.

Snapchat said it had 161 million dally active users at the end of last year. The growth of that number has slowed considerably. Bloomberg recently estimated that Snapchat’s number moved ahead of Twitter’s by this measure around the middle of last year.

The argument against Twitter is that it has nothing to show for its huge user base. Despite the presence of high-profile users like Donald Trump and the addition of features like livestreaming sports events, Twitter has not been able to convince marketers to view it as an essential way to reach consumers. Twitter’s revenue was flat in the final quarter of last year at $717 million.

Snap’s revenue for all of 2016 was $404 million. Unlike Twitter, it has posted huge growth recently. The number was $59 million in 2015. Twitter was able to claim a similar growth rate, but that goes back four years ago.

Experts might argue that the balance sheets of Twitter and Snap are different, but that, in and of itself, does not explain the market cap disparity. Snap shares have started down a path not unlike Twitter’s, which means that it could have a ways to fall.

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