New Stock On The Rise

The reports about Snap creating a drone come hours before it has its public flotation on the stock market. Both sold 16 million shares, raking in $272 million.

A year-long lock-up period is atypically long, potentially signifying strong demand for the IPO, says Lauren Hirsch who covers the story for Reuters.

Snap’s IPO was one of the most anticipated public offerings for a technology company since Twitter’s.

It might be best known for pics and quirky face filters but Snapchat’s parent company is now valued at more than $30 billion.

In its opening minutes, its price hit $24.48 a share, a jump of about 40%.

Facebook shares, on the other hand, are 259% higher since their first day of trading – the company proving doubters wrong in the crucial area of mobile advertising revenue.

Its now holdings include Facebook (FB), PayPal (PYPL) and Twitter (TWTR), which aren’t to be found in its smaller rival. In 2016, the company garnered revenues of $404 million but lost $515 million. It’s not uncommon for the price of shares in an IPO to rise slightly from the company’s initial estimate.

Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser today initiated coverage of Snap with a “sell” rating – and a target price of $10 a share.

It has around 158 million users and growing, and a lot of them are between the ages of 18 and 24. It’s a chance to convince them of the worth of the new stock, deflecting any concerns they may have about how successful the company may be. Even Snap itself has tried to distance itself from its app-based roots by declaring that it’s now a camera company from the future, whatever that means.

Eggers then went to Stanford University to meet with Snap co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy.

Snapchat started 2017 with 158 million daily active users, most of whom are people in their teens, 20s and early 30s.

Nicole Bullock, the USA equities correspondent for the Financial Times, people were excited about the float because there had been a drought of big tech companies listing for the last few years.