Music streaming business Pandora reported earnings after the bell on Thursday.
Adjusted earnings per share were negative six cents, better than the negative eight cents that Yahoo Finance analysts were predicting.
Revenue was $378.6 million, an 8 percent year-over-year increase from last year. Yet it’s beneath the $380.57 million that analysts were expecting. Shares quickly dipped nearly 6 percent in initial after-hours trading.
Advertising accounted for the bulk of Pandora’s revenue and at $275.7 million was a 1 percent year-over-year increase from last year.
Pandora said that it had an increase in paid subscribers, from 4.01 million in the third quarter of 2016 to 5.19 million in the third quarter of 2017.
“After just a short time here at Pandora, it’s clear to me we have a tremendous opportunity to meet the full spectrum of our listeners’ and advertisers’ needs,” said Roger Lynch, president and CEO of Pandora, in a statement. “We have significant scale, distribution and products that deliver a superior listening experience. We will leverage these strengths to become a more integral part of our listeners’ lives and reinforce our position as the definitive source for audio advertising.”
Listener hours were down, however. This quarter had 5.15 billion hours listened, compared to 5.40 billion at the same time last year.
Its challenges are partly due to competition with Spotify and Apple Music. It’s also because it has to pay costly royalty fees.
Pandora closed Thursday at $7.41. The company has a market cap of $1.8 billion.