Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Snap shares tanked 15% Tuesday when it reported second-quarter earnings in which global average revenue per user missed expectations.
Here is how the company did compared with Wall Street’s expectations:
Earnings per share: Loss of 16 cents. That figure is not comparable to analysts’ estimates.
Revenue: $1.34 billion vs. $1.35 billion expected, according to LSEG
Global daily active users: 469 million vs. 467 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Global average revenue per user (ARPU): $2.87 vs. $2.90 expected, according to StreetAccount
ARPU is an indication of how much advertising revenue the company generates from each user. The weaker-than-expected result is particularly noticeable because some of Snap’s social media and online ad peers, like Reddit, have beaten analyst estimates for ARPU during this earnings season.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in an investor letter that the company’s “topline growth” was impacted by a bungled update to its adverting platform that has since been addressed, the “timing of Ramadan” and the “effects of the de minimis changes,” referring to President Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Spiegel said that the advertising platform update, made to improve advertiser performance, resulted in some online ad campaigns clearing “the auction at substantially reduced prices.” Now that Snap has “reverted this change,” the company’s “advertising revenue growth has improved as advertisers adjust their bid strategies to achieve their objectives,” the executive wrote.
In April, Snap reported first-quarter earnings in which it declined to provide guidance due to macroeconomic uncertainties that could impact its online ad business.
The company said its second-quarter sales grew 9% year over year while it recorded a net loss of $262.6 million. Snap’s net loss during the same quarter last year was $248.6 million.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, for the second quarter came in at $41 million, trailing the $53 million that StreetAccount was projecting.
Snap said third-quarter revenue will come in between $1.475 billion and $1.505 billion, ahead of Wall Street estimates of $1.475 billion.
The company said adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter will be in the range between $110 million and $135 million. That figure’s midpoint of $122.5 million is higher than StreetAccount’s projections of $116 million.
Snap said third-quarter global daily active users will total 476 million, roughly in line with the 475.7 million StreetAccount is expecting.
The company’s Snapchat+ subscription service is approaching 16 million in the second quarter, representing a 42% year-over-year increase, Spiegel wrote in the investor letter. Snap’s subscription service is the “largest driver” to the company’s Other Revenue category, rising 64% year over year to $171 million in the second quarter, Spiegel said.
Snap’s adjusted operating expenses for the second quarter rose 10% year over year to $654 million, Spiegel said in the letter.
Spiegel said in the investor letter that it will be “distributing” its engineering teams to “directly support” its business functions, resulting in its core applications team reporting to tech chief Bobby Murphy. The monetization engineering team will be reporting to business chief Ajit Mohan.
“Our Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer will report to me and lead enterprise-wide foundational infrastructure and platform integrity,” Spiegel said in the letter. “This new, distributed structure will empower our teams to take greater ownership and drive continued innovation for our community and advertising partners.”
Eric Young, Snap’s senior vice president of engineering who joined the social media company in 2023 from Google, is leaving the company to “pursue a new opportunity,” Spiegel said in the letter.
Last Thursday, Amazonreported second-quarter earnings in which its online ad sales rose 23% year over year to $15.69 billion, while Redditreported second-quarter revenue that jumped 78% year over year to $500 million.
Alphabet reported its second-quarter earnings on July 23 that beat on the top and bottom lines. Meta said on July 30 that its second-quarter sales grew 22% year over year to $47.52 billion.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Apple shares rose 13% this week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.
Shares of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400 billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.
At the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce Apple’s plans to spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four years.
Apple’s plans to buy more American chips pleased Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double the price of imported chips.
Investors had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.
“Apple and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an overweight rating on Apple’s stock.
Cook’s successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales grew by 13%.
In an aerial view, the Tesla headquarters is seen in Austin, Texas, on July 24, 2025.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Tesla has been granted a permit to run a ride-hailing business in Texas, allowing the electric vehicle maker to compete against companies including Uber and Lyft.
Tesla Robotaxi LLC is licensed to operate a “transportation network company” until August 6, 2026, according to a listing on the website of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, or TDLR. The permit was issued this week.
Elon Musk’s EV company has been running a limited ride-hailing service for invited riders in Austin since late June. The select few passengers have mostly been social media influencers and analysts, including many who generate income by posting Tesla fan content on platforms like X and YouTube.
The Austin fleet consists of Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla’s latest partially automated driving systems. The company has been operating the cars with a valet, or human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat tasked with intervening if there are issues with the ride. The vehicles are also remotely supervised by employees in an operations center.
Musk, who has characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic,” said on Tesla’s earnings call last month that he believes Tesla could serve half of the U.S. population by the end of 2025 with autonomous ride-hailing services.
The Texas permit is the first to enable Tesla to run a “transportation network company.” TDLR said Friday that this kind of permit lets Tesla operate a ride-hailing business anywhere in the state, including with “automated motor vehicles,” and doesn’t require Tesla to keep a human safety driver or valet on board.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As CNBC previously reported, Tesla robotaxis were captured on camera disobeying traffic rules in and around Austin after the company started its pilot program. None of the known incidents have been reported as causing injury or serious property damage, though they have drawn federal scrutiny.
In one incident, Tesla content creator Joe Tegtmeyer reported that his robotaxi failed to stop for a train crossing signal and lowering gate-arm, requiring a Tesla employee on board to intervene. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has discussed this incident with Tesla, a spokesperson for the regulator told CNBC by email.
Texas has historically been more permissive of autonomous vehicle testing and operations on public roads than have other states.
A new law signed by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott goes into effect this year that will require AV makers to get approval from the state before starting driverless operations. The new law also gives the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles the authority to revoke permits if AV companies and their cars aren’t complying with safety standards.
Tesla’s AV efforts have faced a number of challenges across the country, including federal probes, product liability lawsuits and recalls following injurious or damaging collisions that occurred while drivers were using the company’s Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) systems.
A jury in a federal court in Miami last week determined that Tesla should hold 33% of the liability for a fatal Autopilot-involved collision.
And the California DMV has sued Tesla, accusing it of false advertising around its driver assistance systems. Tesla owners manuals say the Autopilot and FSD features in their cars are “hands on” systems that require a driver ready to steer or brake at any time. But Tesla and Musk have shared statements through the years saying that a Tesla can “drive itself.”
Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon be able to turn all of its existing EVs into fully autonomous vehicles with a simple, over-the-air software update. In 2019, he said the company would put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a claim that helped him raise $2 billion at the time from institutional investors.
Those promises never materialized and, in the robotaxi market, Tesla lags way behind competitors like Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.
Tesla shares are down 18% this year, by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.
Shares of The Trade Desk plummeted almost 40% on Friday and headed for their worst day on record after the ad-tech company announced the departure of its CFO and analysts expressed concerns about rising competition from Amazon.
The Trade Desk, which went public in 2016, suffered its steepest prior drop in February, when the shares fell 33% on a revenue miss. In its second-quarter earnings report late Thursday, the company beat expectations on earnings and revenue, but the results failed to impress investors.
The Trade Desk, which specializes in providing technology to companies that want to target users across the web, said finance chief Laura Schenkein is leaving the job and being replaced by Alex Kayyal, who has been working as a partner at Lightspeed Ventures.
While some analysts were uneasy about the sudden change in the top finance role, the bigger concern is Amazon’s growing role in the online ad market, as well as the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on ad spending.
Amazon has emerged as a significant player in the digital advertising market in recent years, and is now third behind Google and Meta. Last week, Amazon reported a 23% increase in ad revenue for the second quarter to $15.7 billion, which beat estimates.
Read more CNBC Amazon coverage
Amazon’s ad business has largely been tied to its own platforms, with brands paying up so they can get discovered on the sprawling marketplace. However, Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), which allows brands to programmatically place ads across a wider swath of internet properties, is gaining more resonance in the market.
“Amazon is now unlocking access to traditionally exclusive ‘premium’ ad inventory across the open internet, validating the strength of its DSP and suggesting The Trade Desk’s value proposition could erode over time,” Wedbush analysts wrote on Friday.
The Wedbush analysts lowered their rating on The Trade Desk to the equivalent of hold from buy, and cited Amazon’s recent ad integration with Disney as a sign of the company’s aggressiveness.
Executives at The Trade Desk were asked about Amazon on the call, and responded by suggesting that the companies don’t really compete, emphasizing that Amazon is conflicted because it will always prioritize its own properties.
“A scaled independent DSP like The Trade Desk becomes essential as we help advertisers buy across everything and that we have to do that without conflict or compromise,” CEO Jeff Green said on the call. “It is my understanding that Amazon nearly doubled the supply of Prime Video inventory in the recent months. That creates a number of conflicts.”
For the second quarter, The Trade Desk reported a 19% increase in year-over-year revenue to $694 million, topping the $685 million estimate, according to analysts polled by LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents beat estimates by a penny.
Looking to the third quarter, the Trump administration’s tariffs were also a theme, as the company forecast revenue of at least $717 million, representing growth of 14% at minimum.
“From a macro standpoint, some of the world’s largest brands are absolutely facing pressure and some amount of uncertainty,” Green said. “Some have to respond more than others to tariffs. Many are managing inflation worries and the related pricing that comes with that.”
With Friday’s slump, The Trade Desk shares are now down 53% for the year, while the S&P 500 is up about 9%. The Trade Desk was added to the S&P 500 in June.