Kylie Jenner’s 'sooo over Snapchat' tweet wipes $US1.3 billion off Snap's market cap

The stock market shares of Snap, owner of the Snapchat app, have fallen $US1.3 billion following Kylie Jenner's news she no longer uses the service.

Kylie Jenner seen at the Metropolitan Museum.

Kylie Jenner is seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2017 in New York City. Source: GC Images

Snapchat corporate parent Snap Inc. saw its stock price slide as much as 8 per cent Thursday after Kylie Jenner tweeted that she wasn't using the service anymore.

News about a lavish compensation package for Snap CEO Evan Spiegel likely also contributed to the decline.

Jenner, who once proclaimed to have the most-viewed Snapchat account, took to Twitter Wednesday afternoon to confess to her 24.5 million followers that she isn't using the app anymore.
Jenner didn't spell out why she parted with Snapchat, but her comments were widely seen as a response to the service's recent controversial redesign.

Snapachat underwent a re-design in November, which has divided users with a petition for the app to roll back to its earlier design attracting one million signatures.

On Thursday morning, Snap filed its annual report with the SEC, which included details on the compensation packages of its senior executives.
Standing out was CEO Evan Spiegel, who had been granted stock options worth a whopping $636.6 million last year following the company's IPO.

That's on top of a salary of around $98,000, and roughly a million dollars of additional compensation and reimbursements.

Spiegel is getting access to these stock options on a quarterly basis over three years following the IPO, so he wouldn't be able to cash all of those $636.6 million in right away - but Reuters still estimated Thursday that this represents the third-highest payout ever received by a CEO. That's not good optics for a company that lost $3.4 billion last year.

Still, there is some hope for Snap: Following her bombshell tweet, Jenner confessed Wednesday afternoon that she still had warm feelings for the service. "Still love you tho snap ... my first love," she tweeted.


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Published 23 February 2018 10:06am
Updated 23 February 2018 2:14pm


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