Equity Shot: Twitter and Snap’s surprising, synchronized social success

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today we’re doing another Equity Shot, a short topic-centered episode where we assemble the troops to dive into one particular thing. Or, in this case, two particular things.

Matthew Lynley, myself, and Katie Roof gathered to pick over Snap and Twitter’s respective earnings reports. They each managed to best expectations, leading to sharp rises in their respective share prices.

First up, Snap shot sharply higher after beating Wall Street revenue and profit expectations. The firm remains deeply, deeply unprofitable, consuming hundreds of millions of cash quarterly to grow. But, its top-line expansion was far enough ahead of expectations that when coupled to solid user growth investors were content.

(Also, a former TechCrunch denizen has a book coming out about Snap that is a good read thus far. More when I finish it.)

Snap is back over its IPO price and managed to retake the market cap crown from Twitter.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite blue bird, Twitter also managed to beat expectations with better-than-anticipated revenue and actual, real, not-adjusted profit in the quarter. Shares of Jack’s social shop were up a comfortable 12 percent when we cut the episode.

All the above sums to a good moment for social startups. Their leading market comps are no longer the kick bags of the internet and financial realms.

We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week. Stay cool!

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