Snap Inc shares soar 44% on U.S. stock market debut

The company has managed to raise $3.4 billion at $17 per share after its initial public offering (IPO), making it the top tech listing since 2014, when Alibaba’s IPO broke all records.

“It’s also the first to go public among a class of companies, including Uber, Airbnb and Pinterest, that have been valued at more than $10 billion while still privately held”, it added. Some are hoping that Snap’s debut can revive a lagging IPO market, as Barron’s reported, and encourage other tech firms to make their debuts.

In what was perhaps a subtle nod to his detractors, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told the Los Angeles Times that it would take an “education process for the next five years”, to properly explain to the general public how his company creates value. But the price of Snap stock – and Snap’s valuation as a company – could go up throughout the day, increasing Spiegel’s net worth by millions – and possibly even billions – in hours.

By selling the initial float at $17, Snap received a total valuation of almost $24 billion.

Bernadette Tansey is Xconomy’s San Francisco Editor. Snap shareholders won’t be able to nominate or remove members of its board, vote on executive compensation or approve or block a takeover of the company.

After months of planning, Snap – the company behind Snapchat – has officially debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, and things are apparently going well.

The messaging app opened at $24 per share, 41 per cent above the price offered to investors yesterday, according to Reuters.

Shares started trading at $23.70, up from their IPO price of $17.

Snap’s stock, trading under the ticker SNAP, closed at $24.48 in the regular session, valuing the company at $34 billion – more than three times the market capitalization of Twitter.

This decision was called “very clever” by trader Jordan Hiscott, who said the move helped differentiate Snapchat from previous technology IPOs such as Facebook and Twitter, which endured mixed results.

Snap is the parent company of popular photo sharing app Snapchat which is beloved by teenagers and people under 30 for applying bunny faces and vomiting rainbows onto selfies. Lynton will still own 2,964,733 shares after the offering, worth more than $50 million based on the offering price.