Spotify reported its first quarterly earnings since going public last month, and its stock quickly took a nosedive Wednesday in after-hours trading.
Shares of the music streaming service fell about 8 percent after investors were seemingly disappointed by the company's outlook.
Spotify met most expectations: 170 million monthly active users and 75 million paid subscribers. Revenue was right in line with expectations at around $1.34 billion.
However, guidance for the current quarter was uninspiring. Revenue growth looks flat-ish, projected to be between $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion. (Thomson Reuters estimated less than $1.6 billion.) And Spotify is still losing money ー more than $200 million last quarter, though that's less than the previous quarter.
Not everyone is disappointed in Spotify. Mike Vorhaus, the president of Magid Advisors, said he was impressed by the company's performance in a crowded, competitive market.
"When you are competing successfully with names like Apple and Amazon, and you continue to grow, that's a very very good sign," he said in an interview Wednesday with Cheddar.
Vorhaus said Spotify has great potential, and the company already has a critical mass of reliable customers and two strong business models.
"As advertising increases in the mobile world, that is going to be big for Spotify as well," he said.
Spotify (announced a mobile redesign) [https://mashable.com/2018/04/24/spotify-mobile-app-redesign-free-tier-on-demand-playlists/#wiPqtX_toqqb] last week that has users and tech fans buzzing. The new app is purportedly faster and will make it easier for non-paying users to access specific songs from playlists. There will also be a new "Data Saver" mode that will help users reduce their data usage by up to 75 percent when using 3G.
For the full segment, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/spotify-reports-for-the-first-time-and-tesla-reports-less-of-a-loss-than-expected).
More than 70 religious leaders have come together to sign a letter to urge Mark Zuckerberg and Meta to halt plans for Instagram for Kids. The signers claim that this new platform, currently on pause, could cause spiritual harm to young people. Lucy Kidwell, the screen-free week coordinator for the nonprofit that organized the letter, Fairplay, joined Cheddar News to discuss the issue on Safer Internet Day. "It's not necessarily the content, even, that's on these platforms, but more the structure of the app itself," she said. "It's all focused on comparison, promoting yourself, putting forward this image of perfection and this beautiful life that's really harmful to kids who can't really separate what's real and what's fake and who may not be emotionally mature enough to handle something so complicated."
Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are set to begin voting to unionize for a second time after workers at the facility in the town of Bessemer overwhelmingly voted against forming a union during an election early last year; but in November, the National Labor Relations Board overturned the vote, upholding a union challenge of the results which argued that Amazon undermined the conditions for a fair election. Another round of ballots will now be mailed out to works at the warehouse for a so-called re-run election. Director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University John Logan and National Field Director for Our Revolution Mike Oles joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
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U.S. markets opened lower as disappointing Meta earnings dragged down the tech-heavy Nasdaq. Today, investors will be watching for Amazon's Q4 earnings report set for release after the market close. Greg Swenson, Founding Partner, Brigg Macadam joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
