SnapChat's monster IPO by the numbers — those crazy, crazy numbers
Snap, the parent company of SnapChat, debuted on the NYSE today.
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Snap, the parent company of SnapChat, debuted on the NYSE today.
In case you've been living under a rock, or are aged over 25, Snap lets you post photos to your friends that instantly disappear (unless you take a screenshot). It's expanded to add story and news features.
Some Snap numbers:
- IPO price: $US17
- IPO valuation: $US20 billion
- Percentage of shares floated: 17%
- Cash raised in IPO: $US3.4 billion
- Listing price: $US24
- Intra-day high: $26.05
- Closing price: $24.48
- Market cap at closing price: $US34 billion
- Age of company: five years
- Age of co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel: 26 years
- Users: 158 million
- 2016 revenue: $US404.5 million
- 2016 profit: ($US514.6 million)
No, I didn't transpose those numbers. Snap's loss was larger than its revenue last year.
After I posted those crazy numbers, I got some predictable replies saying 158 million users must be worth something, particularly if so many of them are in the coveted millennial demographic.
Well, I hope the Snap founders do well, and the share price does stay up long enough for them to see their stock (currently worth around $US5 billion) come out of the lockup period.
But I'm also old enough to remember the bubble and pop of MySpace. And Yahoo had hundreds of millions of users for years without ever hitting on an effective way to financially exploit them.
As soon as you try to monetise a service, the young 'uns have a habit of upping sticks and moving on to the next big thing.
Already, there's heat from the competition, with Instagram (owned by Facebook) recently introducing a "stories" feature that shamelessly clones Snapchat.
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SnapChat's monster IPO by the numbers — those crazy, crazy numbers
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