Snap debuts on New York Stock Exchange

The banner for the Snap Inc.

The company also needs to convince investors to put their complete trust in its management, as it is listing non-voting shares, the first company to do so in the U.S., according to its deal filing.

A Californian high school that invested in Snapchat’s parent company five years ago has reportedly made $24m, or more than £19m, from selling a portion of its shares when the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange this week. The Los Angeles company is valued at above $30 billion. Earlier projections expected the range of $14 to $16.

The main achievement of Snap is Snapchat, an app famous for its disappearing messages, photos and videos. “Tencent and Facebook have lite versions of their app and that helps them attract users in the rest of the world”.

That’s a remarkable open since new issues typically see a lot of see-sawing on the first day as investors weigh demand for the stock against the company’s actual business. Snapchat has 158 million daily active users, most of whom are people in their teens, 20s and early 30s. She said all her friends were obsessed with it.

Ultimately, Snap’s competition, which includes wide-moat Facebook with billions of users, is overwhelming in our view. His stake in Snap is now valued at $71 million. In addition to Instagram’s massively popular Stories feature, WhatsApp, another Facebook-owned company, launched its own version of Stories last month.

Snap’s IPO valuation of $23.8 billion and 2016 revenue of $404.5 million gives a ratio of 58.8.

Snap could have priced the IPO at as much as $19 a share, but the company wanted to focus on securing long-term investors rather than hedge funds looking to quickly sell, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. “Such moves could damp volatility by limiting the number of short-term stockholders who can jump in and out”.

Snap has had to convince potential investors that it won’t have the same trajectory as Twitter has, a company that has been struggling constantly ever since its IPO, despite massive optimism shown both by the company and investors.