Publicly traded Spotify held its Q1 earnings report this week, and in this post we look at the finances. (The 6-K financial report is publicly available HERE.

 

“This quarter represents our strongest Q1 since going public.” –Deniel Ek, CEO, Spotify

 

One of the headline growth metrics in Q1 is the usage report. As of the first quarter, Spotify serves more than a half-billion total users, of which over 200-million are paying subscribers to the Premium tier.

Ek noted that the user growth exceeded expectations by 15-million, and that subscriber growth also surpassed the expected growth by three million. He observed that the geographic distribution of growth was “broad-based,” not particularly favoring any country or region. At the same time, the marketing spend felicitously grew less than the growth metrics — music to the ears of investors on the call. 

Ek noted that the long-term impact of new users on the company’s usage metrics takes several quarters or years to be manifest. The central message is that Spotify sees “an acceleration in MAU [monthly active users] retention and subs.”

Spotify CFO Paul Vogel echoed that user growth was especially strong in Q1, and affected “nearly all” ages and geographic regions. He offered a Q2 forecast: “530-million MAU, an increase of 50 million from Q1, and 270 million subscribers, an increase of 7 million over Q1.”

Leaning into Spotify’s 6-K filing for Q1, we see these key metrics:

 

 

Investors were pleased with the Q1 results, driving SPOT stock nearly eight percent:

 

 

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