Shares of Spotify dipped Wednesday after the company reported its first-quarter 2022 earnings.
The stock was down 10% in the afternoon amid a tough earnings season for tech stocks.
Here are the key numbers:
- Earnings per share: 21 euro cents vs. an estimated loss of 24 euro cents, per Refinitiv
- Revenue: 2.66 billion euros vs. 2.62 billion euros, per Refinitiv
The company, which has heavily invested in its podcasting business and is trying to grow ads in the space, said ad-supported revenue came in at 282 million euros. That made up 11% of its total revenue, which the company said was its largest first quarter ever for the segment. Still, it missed analyst expectations of 304.1 million euros in ad-supported revenue, according to FactSet.
Spotify ended the quarter with 182 million paid subscribers, which is up 15% year over year but falls below its original forecast of 183 million. The company said exiting Russia led to a loss of 1.5 million subscribers. Revenue from subscriptions grew to 2.38 billion euros, up 23% year over year.
Spotify reached 422 million monthly active users, or MAUs, in its first quarter, up 19% year over year and exceeding its own guidance by 4 million. It also beat analyst expectations, according to a FactSet consensus.
Spotify had 4 million podcasts on its platform at the end of the quarter, up from 3.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Growth in the number of MAUs who engaged with its podcasts have continued to outpace total MAU growth, while podcast share of overall consumption hours on the platform reached an all-time high, the company said.
Spotify said that during March, when there was a brief service outage that caused users to be automatically logged out of the platform, about 3 million users likely created new accounts to log back in. The company said that in April, one month after the outage, it saw a reversal of that benefit.
Spotify expects to post 428 million MAUs in its second quarter, which reflects a loss from the closure of its Russian operations as well as the full reversal of its March service outage benefit. The company expects to reach 187 million total paid subscribers.
