Snap CEO Spiegel: Focused on long term over stock price; eyeing 'super app' approach
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News

Making the media rounds in Cannes, France, Snap (NYSE:SNAP) CEO Evan Spiegel talked up his company's approach to augmented reality as a growth vector for the company, and addressed the "warning heard around the world": when Snap said it expected to miss Q2 guidance, sending the stock tumbling.
"This is like, what, the third time our stock's been in the teens in the last five years," Spiegel told CNBC. (Snap stock (SNAP) is up 5.3% Tuesday at midday, to $13.09.)
"And over that period of time we've grown our revenue more than 5x; I think our community has nearly doubled; so we just stay focused on the long term and that's what we've been doing in the 10-plus years we've been in business," he said.
Heavy inflation was "to be expected," Spiegel said, considering that government response to the pandemic was "double what we saw in the financial crisis." Businesses focused on growing earnings are seeing bottom-line pressure due to rising input costs, he said. "And then you're seeing growth companies that are really thinking about building their business over the long term - the value of that incremental customer a few years out is lower now because interest rates are higher, so those earnings get discounted at a higher rate."
As for Snap's approach to that environment in particular, where input costs are increasing, "what becomes really, really important is performance ... that's why digital advertising is so important," and critical to the way people are building businesses, Spiegel said.
Spiegel was promoting a big exhibit on augmented reality, and highlighted it as important to future revenue. "If you look at young people, about a third of their discretionary spend today goes to fashion, accessories, beauty," Spiegel said. "And all of those different categories can see amazing results with augmented reality because it allows people to try those products from the comfort of their home."
He didn't get specific on revenue, saying the focus now is on onboarding merchants using AR tools.
Along the way he gave some credence to an older idea that Elon Musk has freshly endorsed for Twitter (TWTR): becoming a "super app," one that doesn't just offer social media connection, but also features other services under one mobile interface.
Speaking to Axios, Spiegel said contrary to companies dividing services across different apps (a la Meta (META) or Google (GOOG) (GOOGL)), "we see the power in diversifying engagement across our service."
Musk's talk about "Twitter as a super app; I think that's an idea that's really compelling," Spiegel said. "I think he's seeing a lot of what we saw in Asia, for example, and a lot of what we've tried to build."