Why NBC’s Snap IPO Investment Is One of Its Biggest Bets Ever

The shares opened trading today at around $23.50 to $24.50, giving the company an overall valuation of $24 billion.

The first-day jump may not be an indication of what happens to their fortunes from here.

Facebook, meanwhile, saw its stock decline sharply for a few months after going public. The six-year-old startup, beloved by millennials, is the biggest USA tech company to go public since Facebook, which was worth $104 billion at its 2012 IPO. Some of that will go to pay the investment banks that managed the IPO, but most will go to the company itself and be used to pay workers, make acquisitions and develop new products.

The trading debuts of major Silicon Valley giants can be extremely volatile and closely monitored, especially if an IPO of Snap’s size comes after a year of dry run.

Above: Snap’s stock fluctuates on first day of trading. Snap has 158 million daily active users. Snapchat banks on the ephemeral nature of posts – content disappears after 24 hours.

Because of that, young people love it. The stock has since risen 259 percent above the IPO price.

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.

Following the IPO, dozens of Snap’s original investors will become millionaires overnight. Given the interest, Snap could have priced the shares at Dollars 19 each, the person said, but executives wanted to ensure that shares would make a decent gain in their debut.

Snap’s float yesterday gave the company the highest valuation since Facebook, which listed in 2012.

In what must go down as one of the understatements of the year, Mr Chiu’s letter on Thursday continued: “The school’s investment in Snap has matured and given us a significant boost as we continue our work towards realising the bold vision and goals”. Investors apparently weren’t deterred by the fact that the Class A shares sold don’t carry voting rights, and leave more than 80 percent of the voting power to CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel and co-founder Robert Murphy, Snap’s chief technology officer. Snap holds the ticker symbol “SNAP” on the NYSE.