Snap: Here’s something to chat about

Snap Inc. has been facing crumbling investor confidence for months amid a decline in the number of users on its Snapchat platform and a series of highprofile executive departures.

But in its fourth-quarter earnings statement, released Tuesday, the company showed some signs a turnaround might be coming soon.

Snap put a stop to the downward trend in user numbers that had plagued it since mid-2018, posting a stable user base of 186 million daily Snapchatters in the last quarter of 2018. The 2018 dip was widely ascribed to an unpopular redesign of the Santa Monica, Calif., firm’s disappearing-video app in early 2018, combined with a long delay in updating the company’s clunky Android offering.

Revenue has increased steadily as the company more effectively monetizes its users’ eyeballs with improved ad products. Snap brought in $390 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from $297 million in the third quarter and $262 million in the second quarter, totaling $1.2 billion in 2018. The company is not yet profitable, though losses improved from $325 million in the third quarter of 2018 to $192 million in the fourth quarter.

Snap stock, which debuted at $27.09 per share at its March 2017 initial public offering, has lost nearly half its value in the last year. But in the minutes following the release of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday, its stock surged more than 20 percent to $8.46 in after-market trading.