Spotify Stock Up After Q3 Results, Though Analyst Wary

to 248 million, beating company guidance. Increased podcast engagement among music listeners is leading to increased conversion from ad-supported to Premium, said the company, calling increases “extraordinary, almost too good to be true.” It's working to “clean up the data to prove causality,” and believes the data is “more right than wrong.” Spotify partnered with AT&T on Premium. On upcoming music label talks, CEO Daniel Ek said it will be the sixth major renegotiation in the company's 13 years, and there’s nothing different: “We don’t expect any material differences with the exception of the introduction of the marketplace strategy,” which Spotify is rolling out this quarter with sponsored playlists. Spotify estimated it's adding about twice as many subscribers monthly as Apple and more users than Amazon's music service. Revenue grew to $1.56 billion from $1.22 billion. Outgoing finance chief (see personals section) Barry McCarthy compared early days of Spotify as a public company to those during his tenure at Netflix, saying “there were long periods" before the stock market "figured out Netflix, just like it will eventually figure out Spotify.” Streaming was to Netflix as podcasting is to Spotify, he said. “There was a time when Netflix increased spending on streaming at the expense of profit." The question for music streaming generally is “how big will it be and will it be a winner-take-all-marketplace?” McCarthy said. "It’s our game to lose.” Pivotal Research Group's Jeffrey Wlodarczak's monitoring the number of senior executives leaving Spotify, including the chief accounting officer and head of music last month, saying he doesn’t view significant management exits positively. He attributed Spotify’s 18 percent jump Monday morning to “massive short covering” and said Spotify shares have underperformed the Nasdaq exchange since the analyst downgraded the stock in July.