SNAP defies forecasts of premature demise

LONDON — It has been a tough year for Snap, maker of the photo messaging app, Snapchat as it lost users to competitors like Instagram. It didn’t help when a Kardashian influencer tweeted that she did not open Snapchat anymore. The company managed to stem the flow by the three months to end December with the latest results beating Wall Street estimates. Losses were curtailed to $192m on revenue of $390m. This compared favourably with a loss of $360m on revenue of $286m a year before. Forecasts of Snap’s premature demise were obviously overdone, and shares jumped 25% on the numbers. Technology columnist Shira Ovide explained to Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowiscz and Paul Sweeney why Snap managed to turn it around… - Linda van Tilburg