Revenue totaled about $404 million for the year, up from zero in sales three years ago. Instead of focusing on the core product of disappearing messages, Snapchat instead represents a new way of consuming content, largely produced by its users - laid alongside a fast-growing advertising business.Īt the end of 2016, Snap reported an average of 158 million active daily users. Throughout the presentations to investors, Snap executives and their advisers kept the emphasis squarely on the promise of what first seemed like a technological lark. With a market value of almost $24 billion, including unvested stock options and grants, the company is now setting itself up with little room for error.

Bankers for the company received orders totaling more than 10 times the number of shares up for sale. In going public, Snap has leapt ahead of other technology darlings like Uber, Airbnb and the data-analysis provider Palantir.Īfter a nearly two-week road show for investors that spanned the country and stretched to London, demand for Snap shares proved robust. Much has been riding on Snap’s offering, including expectations that it will lift a moribund market in new stocks. Yet when Snap begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, under the ticker name SNAP, it will command a lofty valuation multiple even richer than that of Facebook, which earned $10 billion last year. And in a decision that has angered some large investors, the shares will have no voting rights, leaving control in the hands of the company’s founders, who can retain that power for years even after leaving Snap. It lost more than $500 million last year, and its explosive user growth appears to have hit a speed bump. Those buying into Snap’s offering did so even as warning signs have flashed over the company, based in California. Shares of the social media companies Facebook and Twitter also rose.

The pricing came on a day when the stock market surged to another high, fed by raised expectations of tax cuts, looser regulations and higher interest rates under the Trump administration. Snap’s offering was priced on Wednesday at $17 a share - a dollar more than the previously expected pricing range.

Price of snap stock