Square is officially a public company

Dorsey’s mother, Marcia, opened the NY Stock Exchange by purchasing flowers from a vendor in the Square sellers market the company set up outside the Exchange. Three high-growth IPOs post a range of positive returns Jack Dorsey’s Square (SQ) slashed its price by 25% from the midpoint to $9 – below the $11 Series D round in 2012 – and proceeded to trade up 45% on high volume (1.7x the float).

Dorsey, who turned 39 Thursday, has most of his wealth tied up in Square.

Square’s first day of public trading got off to a fast start on Thursday morning in what has been a bumpy ride for one of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile startups. Their revenue comes from getting a cut of transaction volumes through people who use the app to sell things. A few analysts have speculated that he will be quick to pass the reins over to a fresh pair of hands at Square, leaving him free to concentrate on turning Twitter into a profitable business. The price is 42 percent below the $15.46-per-share price that Square fetched a year ago when it raised $180 million while it was still a privately held company.

Square’s IPO did something that hasn’t been done since 1998. The company processed $23.8 billion in payments past year alone, and had signed major deals with retailers like Starbucks. For the first six months of 2015, revenues were $560.6 million, net loss was $77.6 million, and gross profit was $164 million.

As an immediate point of comparison, IAC-owned Match Group also went public today, popping from its $12 share price to $13.50.

Square’s day-one surge underscores the challenge of pricing shares in startups that, while private, attracted lofty valuations they may not be able to sustain once they’ve gone public and become subject to broader regulatory scrutiny.

The indicated price had given the company a valuation of almost $US3 billion, half of where it was priced at its most recent private-financing round. The value of Khosla Ventures’s shares rose to $660 million from $455 million in the IPO.

Compounding concerns is Square CEO Jack Dorsey’s dual role running Twitter Inc, a social media company struggling for a turnaround. Investors had expected shares to price at more than $18, and Square must sell several million additional shares to make up the difference.

On Monday, Square finally touched on the dual roles of Dorsey in an IPO filing that was updated and states Dorsey would give his complete business efforts as well as time to the company other than with respect to work he has with Twitter.