Why Snap stock surged again on Thursday

There are plenty of stocks that beat the market convincingly on both Wednesday and Thursday, but not very many. Among these big performers was the social media company Snap (SNAP 4.14%)which again posted a bumper gain on the penultimate day of the trading week. Snap didn’t offer any fresh news, but an analyst backed the buy case for the stock, helping to send it more than 4% higher on a day when S&P 500 the index registered an increase of 1.7%.

A bull continues to recommend a buy

Two days after Snap’s partner summit, where it unveiled a number of innovations in its offerings, another preacher reiterated his positive view of the company.

That was Loop Capital’s Alan Gould, who before the market opened published a take on both the summit and the social media veteran’s future outlook. It’s a Snap bull as it kept its buy recommendation and price target of $14 per share intact.

Gould wrote in the latest research note that while the event didn’t change his view of Snap’s potential, he found more information from management to be encouraging. Among them was the increase in monthly average users (MAU), an important metric in the social media world. The company’s MAUs from last year’s summit to the 2024 event increased by 100 million to 850 million.

Prominent and under-the-radar revenue streams

The analyst also believes in an often-dismissed corner of Snap’s business, augmented reality (AR) glasses, though he believes that opportunity will take quite a while to reach its full promise. Meanwhile, he believes “content and ad unification efforts will provide a new axis of optimization, (and) product work on app install ads will provide another level of direct response revenue growth.”