Snap is creating exclusive shows
Snap (SNAP) is trying to snap back.
The struggling social media giant announced that it would be releasing a slew of original content on its Snapchat platform starting Wednesday.
Snap shares have been on a precipitous decline this year, falling nearly 52% as daily active user numbers shrink.
In an attempt to win over new users and bring back old users, Snap brought in high-profile producers of popular shows “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and “Friday Night Lights” and will be releasing a range of different genres from drama, mystery, horror, romance, comedy and even documentaries.
New episodes for the shows will be released daily, and each series will have a dedicated home page for easy accessibility. Additionally, in order to appeal to the younger, mobile audience, the episodes will be around five minutes each and all shot vertically.
“Let’s see if [these shows] are any good,” Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said to Yahoo Finance. There will be “zero impact [on the stock] if they suck, positive if they are good and get strong word of mouth.”
Snap has been under a tremendous amount of pressure recently from the public and Wall Street alike. Earlier this year, celebrities including socialite Kylie Jenner and singer Rihanna slammed the social media app. Jenner’s tweet about the app’s new redesign took the stock down 7% in a single day, wiping out about $1 billion in market cap.
Last week, in a leaked internal memo, CEO Evan Spiegel stated that he plans to make Snap profitable by 2019. However, in a note to clients yesterday, analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson said that Snap “is quickly running out of money. Our math suggests a capital raise is needed in the middle to end of 2019.” Nathanson lowered his price target on the stock to $6.50 per share.
Snap shares fell another 4.6% midday Tuesday and were sitting at $6.67 a share.
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Heidi Chung is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @heidi_chung.
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