Pandora’s first-quarter earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations, bringing in $230.8 Million in revenue and a loss of 12 cents per share.
Its active listener count — while up year over year — fell quarter over quarter. The company said users listened to 5.3 billion hours of music in the first quarter this year, with 79.2 million active listeners — up from 75.3 million listeners in the same quarter last year. In the previous quarter, there were 81.5 million active listeners that listened to 5.2 billion hours of music.
Shares of Pandora fell as much as 6% in extended trading after ending regular trading up about 1%.
Subscription and other revenue rose 32% year-over-year to $52 million, while ad revenue was $178.7 million, up 27% year-over-year. The company continues to see most of its listening happen on mobile devices, with $181.1 million in revenue coming from mobile listening. That’s not all that surprising, given that Pandora has consistently remained among in the top-10 rankings on the App Store.
Analysts were expecting a loss of 16 cents per share on around $225 million in revenue on a non-GAAP basis. Analysts were expecting a loss of 27 cents per share on a GAAP basis, which Pandora beat with a loss of 23 cents per share.
Despite its success on the App Store and Google Play, Pandora has found itself under attack by the largest technology companies in recent years. Apple released iTunes Radio in 2013, and also recently acquired Beats and is expected to integrate that into iTunes Radio. Google also launched its own music service, Google Play All Access, in 2013. And in March this year, Amazon added ad-free music stations to its Amazon Prime members.
After reporting its fourth-quarter earnings, Pandora’s shares promptly tanked, dropping more than 17% after falling short of analyst expectations. But in the months following that report, Pandora has regained significant ground, trading at around $17.68 at the close before reporting its first-quarter earnings.
Earnings in tech have been a bit mixed this quarter. Facebook missed analyst estimates on revenue, and Google today reported earnings that missed expectations on its earnings per share. Meanwhile, Microsoft beat expectations on both earnings and revenue.