
TechCrunch published Snap earnings before numbers went public - tempsy
https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1186735799338860544
======
lnanek2
Hmm, the time on the Twitter post says 1:07PM. The earnings call was 2PM. But
I've noticed the Snap investor site always has the presentation put up a bit
before the call, like an hour or so. I've read the presentation before the
call started plenty of times. Maybe TC just had a prewritten article ready to
go, waiting for the presentation, and plugged in the numbers?

~~~
Thorrez
The tweet says:

>Yep, TC had the numbers early and published almost 10 min before numbers
actually hit the wires.

It appears the official announcement was supposed to be at 4:10pm EDT[1]. The
tweet was at 4:07pm EDT. It's likely the tweet was posted several minutes
after the TechCrunch article. So that lines up with the TechCrunch article
being ~10 minutes early. The author of the TechCrunch article tweeted it at
4:32pm EDT[2]. There is an archive.org snapshot from 4:02pm EDT in which it
has a 404[3]. I'm guessing that snapshot was after it had been taken down, and
before it had been put back up. Because if it was before it was ever posted,
it raises the question of how did archive.org know which URL to snapshot?

[1]
[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191022006082/en/](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191022006082/en/)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/JoshConstine/status/1186742106175393792](https://twitter.com/JoshConstine/status/1186742106175393792)

[3]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191022200231/https://techcrunc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191022200231/https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/22/snapchat-
earnings-q3-2019/)

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gojomo
A new business model for supporting online journalism emerges!

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kovek
What is a use case for TechCrunch to have these numbers before they are
published by the SEC?

~~~
advisedwang
Make a deal with a reporter for early info in exchange for favourable
coverage?

~~~
kovek
But that would be insider trading right?

~~~
Spivak
Is it insider trading is if you don’t do anything with the information?

~~~
kovek
Alright, then I guess I’ll get into reporting, develop relationships with
public companies, get some of these numbers and maybe spill them very
carefully to who knows who? There’s always telegram or other for me to share
it carefully. No one can find out.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Just like anything other crime, if you do it enough to make serious money
they'll dedicate resources to going after it. It's the difference between
being a dealer and a kingpin and there's not much money to be made being a
dealer.

Also, odds are the SEC is punching the names of anyone who makes it big day
trading into some NSA type database and if they know anyone who would have had
the information that link will be followed up on.

~~~
natechols
Yes, the SEC definitely follows up on this, or so I've been told. They're not
idiots, and this kind of financial crime is basically super-low-hanging fruit
for them (probably because many people make the mistake of assuming they _are_
idiots).

~~~
wgerard
> Yes, the SEC definitely follows up on this

Yes, and they're quite adept at it even if you don't think you're leaving a
trace. For example: [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-
release/2014-55](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2014-55)

~~~
Danieru
Interesting how the middleman got off without punishment. Shows how narrow
insider trading can get, which speaks the the programmer tendency to assume
law is code. Rather law is interpreted and in this case only two of the three
parties fell under the SEC enforcement. That neither is going to jail is also
notable, SEC can take money and burn a career but stealing from the market is
lots safer than selling drugs.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Well, for insider trading, it isn't prohibited by law. It's _entirely_
precedent.

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minimaxir
This apparently resulted in a very distinct blip in $SNAP:
[https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1186740313081159680](https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1186740313081159680)

~~~
nodesocket
Not necessarily, in after hours waiting for earnings can be extremely volatile
but generally it's very low volume so not important.

~~~
semiotagonal
It's funny to see someone sell all the way down from $14 to $12 regardless of
the volume. Whoever had that bid in at $12 must be laughing their ass off.

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filmgirlcw
Whatever investor relations person authorized this — embargo or not — almost
certainly just got fired.

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tempsy
Any lawyers speak to why it would even be legal to give journalists earnings
numbers before they were public, even if they were under embargo?

~~~
minimaxir
There is debate on how often companies provide raw earnings ahead of time:
[https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1186741657351413761](https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1186741657351413761)

~~~
tempsy
Seems silly for the SEC to allow that. A media embargo isn’t something legally
binding...it’s more like a gentleman’s handshake AFAIK

~~~
qeternity
If there’s an accompanying NDA then it is legally binding. Same thing happens
with the Fed, EIA, USDA, BLS, etc

~~~
tempsy
I don’t think that’s how media embargos work, meaning no signed NDAs. It’s
usually just a journalist telling a company rep a verbal “yes I agree to the
embargo”.

~~~
dannyw
Verbal agreements are very much legally binding, especially if it is in
writing (e.g. over email).

~~~
ajdlinux
Not a lawyer, but I thought that one element of a binding contract (at least
in the common law Anglosphere) is that the parties must intend to create a
legally binding relationship - i.e. if two friends agree to each do a favour
for each other, and one of them reneges on their promise, the courts won't
hold that it's a contract because in general if you ask a friend to do a
favour for you, it's not understood to be a formal legal relationship.

I wonder how that applies to embargoes that don't come with formal NDAs or
whatever.

~~~
was_boring
I worked for lawyers that did a lot of contract law. It can vary from state to
state (in the U.S.) but the state I worked in a verbal agreement -- not even
written down -- is legally binding. Proving a non-written agreement can be
hard in court but that is a different issue.

~~~
ajdlinux
Not disagreeing - I didn't say a verbal agreement isn't binding.

What I'm saying is that a verbal agreement is binding if there's an intention
to create binding relations, and not binding if there is not that intention.

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npollock
DAU up 13% year over year to 210M. I thought Instagram Stories had flattened
Snap's growth. Does anyone know if the growth is a result of changes to the
product?

~~~
zjaffee
They did redo the android app sometime earlier in the year, it's very likely
that is playing a factor.

~~~
raiyu
Over 80% of the new acquired users are international, not the in the US, where
the percentage of Android is much higher. So it's definitely having an impact.

The downside for most social networks is that the revenue generated from non-
US users is much lower than US.

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ksec
Does anyone know if this is standard practice worldwide? Or is it US only? How
on earth do these numbers be handed to reporters before hand? It isn't about
having NDA or not, It shouldn't even be allowed in the first place.

This is going to be controversial opinion. I could trust lawyers, and Accounts
to be professional, but Journalist? So we could give the results to anyone who
wants it early as longs as they sign a NDA and dont trade with the
information?

~~~
manigandham
Public companies are full of employees that know insider information. An
upcoming roadmap by the newest hire can be enough to predict news.

Sensitive data isn't a problem. There are plenty of rules and processes with
NDAs, especially in news publishing which often have scheduled stories under
embargo. Also the companies are dealing with the news organizations who would
vet and assign the proper journalist. I doubt you would get this info by
claiming to be an indie blogger.

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cbhl
I wonder how much of this was just somebody fat-fingering a "Publish Now"
button instead of a "Save Draft for the scheduled publish later" button. (And
then getting fired over it.)

I'm reminded of the hawaii nuclear alert ui, and I know I've built my fair
share of not-great-to-use quickly-coded admin UIs over the years.

~~~
swarnie_
I don't think the issue is the fact it was published early, i think it's more
to do with having the numbers early.

As i'm sure you know reporting restrictions are heavily regulated, a random
tech editor shouldn't have this data before investors.

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gamblor956
Cue the SEC insider trading investigation in 3...2...1...

It's fine to release numbers online, through generally available media like
Twitter or Facebook.

Techcrunch doesn't cut it. That means at least one person (i.e., at
Techcrunch) got the information before the rest of the public (meaning anyone
not at Snap).

~~~
qeternity
There is nothing wrong with this. Plenty of people have the info before it’s
released (under NDA/embargo). Being one of these people AND trading on it
before it’s released is a different story.

~~~
tempsy
Ok, so TechCrunch violated whatever agreement they had with Snap. What is the
consequence?

~~~
gamblor956
Nothing, for TC.

For Snap? A fine and a binding agreement not to do this again or else to
designate TC as one of their preferred methods of disclosing financial
information (like Elon's twitter is for Tesla).

Shareholders on the wrong sides of trades today can also sue Snap and have a
good chance of recovering any putative losses. This is actually the bigger
concern for Snap since this is likely a much bigger amount than any potential
SEC fine.

~~~
paxys
I wouldn't say nothing for TC. Breaching embargoes is a very big deal in
journalism and incidents like this greatly affect a publication's reputation.
They are definitely not getting any such briefings for a while now.

~~~
tenpies
I would say that is pre-2016. After 2016, journalism as a profession became
extremely fast and loose. A "we'll apologize if we're wrong" approach took
over, plus zero accountability or consequences for false information.

On the bright side, the SEC will eventually ask how this happened. Not that
they do any serious enforcement these days.

~~~
tempsy
Well they had time to prosecute a first year investment banking analyst who
made $100k trading on insider information a few months ago and just this week
did the same to another Goldman Sachs banker. I’m positive both resulted in
gains much smaller than the losses some people sustained by this mishap.

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vuln
But but but ad revenue.

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theboywho
The numbers are positive, so if anything, this is an elaborate marketing
campaign.

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buboard
I find the fact that it s 2019 and accounting is still stuck on this parade of
"quarterly" numbers baffling, especially for tech companies. And on top of
this, investors will pretend they couldn't have known until the "sorcerers"
release their "secret". It's like fukin middle earth .

The one (1) guy who runs nomad list all by himself, reports his earnings
daily. Surely it can't be THAT hard

[https://nomadlist.com/open](https://nomadlist.com/open)

