Shares in music streamer Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) are up nearly 9% in premarket trading as of the time of this writing after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings results for its fiscal 2024.
It was a quarter that ended the music streamer’s first full year of profitability. And saw many important metrics increase by double-digit percentages. Here’s what you need to know about Spotify’s Q4 2024 earnings.
SPOT Q4 2024 earnings by the numbers
Spotify posted several investor-pleasing metrics today. Here are the main highlights of Spotify’s Q4 2024:
- Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 675 million (up 12% Y/Y)
- Premium subscribers: 263 million (up 11% Y/Y)
- Total Revenue: €4.2 billion (up 16% Y/Y)
Spotify says its 35 million additional MAUs was the largest Q4 MAU addition in the company’s history and ended up exceeding the company’s internal forecasts by 10 million. Additionally, its Premium Subscriber additions of 11 million were 3 million more than the company forecasted.
But perhaps the best news from Spotify’s results was that it reported its first full year of operating income profitability. Operating income in Q4 reached €477 million, and for the 2024 fiscal year totaled €1.4 billion.
Spotify stock jumps
After announcing its Q4 2024 results, Spotify shares jumped in premarket trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
As of the time of this writing, SPOT shares are currently up almost 9% to above $596 per share. Year-to-date, SPOT shares were already up over 21% as of yesterday’s closing share price of $549.
Spotify’s stock is trading significantly higher than where it was just a few years ago. In October 2023, the company’s share price was trading below $75 per share. But since then, it has steadily risen and, since mid-2024, has experienced a resurgence.
Much of that resurgence can be attributed to the efficiency efforts the company has adopted in recent years, notes Yahoo Finance. Those efforts have included reducing costs through layoffs and shifts away from its beleaguered podcasts strategy.
Looking ahead to 2025
Spotify is the largest music streamer in the world in terms of monthly active users. Its next closest competitor is Apple Music. But if Apple’s recent efforts are any indication, the iPhone maker could be gunning hard to overtake Spotify in 2025.
Yesterday, Apple announced that it is offering new Apple Music subscribers six months of the music streaming service for just $2.99. That equates to less than 50 cents a month and shows the financial hit Apple is willing to take if it means gaining some of Spotify’s hundreds of millions of current subscribers, who currently pay $11.99 a month for individual plans.
Spotify did not address Apple’s promotion in its Q4 results today, but the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, said he was “very excited about 2025 and [feels] really good about where we are as both a product and as a business.”
“We will continue to place bets that will drive long term impact, increasing our speed while maintaining the levels of efficiency we achieved last year,” Ek noted. “It’s this combination that will enable us to build the best and most valuable user experience, grow sustainably and deliver creativity to the world.”
As for the first part of Spotify’s 2025, the company has issued a Q1 forecast in which it sees itself adding 3 million MAUs for the current quarter as well as another 2 million net new premium subscribers.