Snapchat is more popular than ever

Snapchat is more popular than ever, and that's very good news for Snap.

The company reported its second quarter results for 2019, revealing that user growth is again on the rise — by a lot.

Snapchat's daily active users (DAUs), one of the app's most closely watched metrics, grew to 203 million, up from 190 million last quarter. That's a new high for the app, and the biggest gains it has made since 2016. It's also significantly higher than Wall Street analysts' expectations, most of which estimated the app would add about 2 million new users.

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The company also beat expectations on revenue, reporting $388 million, an increase of 48 percent from last year.

But the most important takeaway is Snap's user growth, which had stalled for nearly a year following a disastrous redesign and growing pressure from Instagram. The addition of 13 million new users shows the company has finally been able to reverse that trend.

Much of that growth came from countries outside of North America and Europe, which have traditionally been Snapchat's biggest markets. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel credited Snapchat's much-talked about Android app redesign, which began rolling out earlier this year, as a key factor.

"We are seeing early positive results following the rollout of our new Android application, with more than a 10 percent increase in the retention rate of people who open Snapchat for the first time," Spiegel said in prepared remarks.

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Also at play: the company's viral augmented reality selfie filters, which have fueled interest in the app. Earlier reports suggested the app's viral "gender swap" filter helped dramatically boost downloads of the app. Spiegel appeared to allude to this success in prepared remarks, citing the success of the company's "next generation" lenses.

"We recently launched the next generation of AR Lenses, which leverage our experience with the mobile camera as well as our ongoing investment in research and innovation," he said. "The popularity of these Lenses drew millions of people into our rebuilt Android application, where they experienced the new and improved Snapchat that led to increased engagement."

Snap CFO Derek Andersen later said the company estimates between 7 and 9 million of its new users was "attributable to an improvement in user engagement that we observed after launching our new augmented reality Lenses, which brought in new users and re-engaged lapsed users."

Spiegel also called out Snapchat's Discover platform, saying time spent in the section has increased 60 percent from last year. In addition to publisher content, Snap has also been investing in new original programming and testing a dedicated section for shows.

Snap stock shot up more than 10 percent in after-hours trading immediately following the results.