Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, speaks during the WSJ Tech Live conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal at the Montage Laguna Beach in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2024.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
Reddit reported better-than-expected profit and revenue in its first-quarter earnings report on Thursday, and also issued an optimistic forecast. The stock jumped over 9% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did compared with LSEG estimates:
- Earnings per share: $1.01 vs. 58 cents expected
- Revenue: $663 million vs. $611 million expected
Revenue jumped 69% in the quarter from $392 million a year earlier, Reddit said in an earnings release. Net income soared to $204 million, or $1.01 per share, from $26 million, or 13 cents per share, a year ago.
Reddit said second-quarter sales should be in the range of $715 million to $725 million, ahead of analyst estimates of $712 million. Adjusted earnings will be between $285 million and $295 million, topping the $276 million average estimate.
The strong results continue a trend in online advertising. Meta and Alphabet, the leaders in digital ads, both beat on revenue in their earnings reports on Wednesday, showing their fastest growth in years. They also revealed plans to increase the amount of money they’re spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Alphabet shares rose Thursday, while Meta shares sank, underscoring investor concerns about the Facebook-parent’s hefty AI spending and its lack of a cloud business.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told analysts during a Thursday earnings call that the social media company’s business has grown significantly despite a lack of heavy spending on capital expenditures. He noted that Reddit now has seven consecutive quarters in which revenue growth was over 60% and that the company’s has “record cash flow of more than $300 million.”
“At the same time, our capital expenditures remains low at just $1 million, underscoring the advantage of Reddit’s capital-light model,” Huffman said. “When you look across the more than 300 publicly traded tech companies, there’s only one that combines this type of growth, profitability and efficiency, and that’s Reddit.”
Reddit’s global daily active unique users, or DAUq, rose 17% year-over-year to 126.8 million for the quarter, ahead of analyst estimates of 125.9 million. The company’s U.S. specific DAUq came in at 53.5 million in the first quarter, representing a 7% year-over-year increase.
Huffman told analysts that Reddit now has a “goal is to reach 100 million daily U.S. users and are actively executing a strategy to get us there,” but he did not disclose a specific timeframe.
Average revenue per user, or ARPU, was $5.23, topping analyst estimates of $4.81. The company’s U.S.-specific ARPU came in at $9.63, ahead of the $8.53 that Wall Street was projecting.
The social media company’s “Other revenue” category, which includes its data licensing business, jumped 15% year-over-year to $39 million. Google and OpenAI are two of Reddit’s biggest data licensing partners.
Some of the benefits of Reddit’s data licensing business outside of revenue include “citations” and “mind share,” Huffman said. He also said that “these companies have the data centers, the foundational models” that Reddit lacks internally but are important for the social media firm’s product and growth strategy.
“We have important partnerships with both Google and OpenAI,” Huffman said. Those are very meaningful to us, and I think it’s mutual. We continue to value those.”
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