Snapchat Parent Stock Surges in Market Debut

That’s far, far, and away above the price Snap set last night, $17 per share, when the company raised $3.4 billion – a 44 percent increase.

The Wednesday pricing makes Snap’s IPO the largest in the US since Alibaba went public in 2014 and could give the recently slow market for technology IPOs a boost. That will value the company-started by three Stanford students and once written off as little more than a teen sexting app-at about $24 billion. Snap’s senior vice president of engineering Timothy Sehn, chief strategy officer Imran Khan and chairman Michael Lynton also notched up big paydays.

In fact, appetite for Snap stock was so strong, many investors accidentally poured money into a completely unrelated company, Snap Interactive, as economist Justin Wolfers pointed out on Twitter. It’s also the first tech company to list in the United States this year. Now Snap just needs to turn those prospects into realities. However, the Los Angeles-based company incurred a $514.6 million loss for the year.

Snap’s stock price is now hovering around the $27 mark.

“This is setting a new precedent”, says Lise Buyer, an IPO expert with Class V Group, who helped take Google public.

The stock soared, with the company is now valued at a whopping $22 billion.

Snapchat’s success has forced larger tech services like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to clone its features, with mixed success. After all, Snap’s shareholders will still retain one lever of control: “Investors can vote with their feet”, Feldman says.

Snapchat launched its app for disappearing messages in 2011 and gradually expanded it to include high-tech photo effects and curated stories from users and media companies.

It debuted video-camera sunglasses called “Spectacles” as its first product in November.

A Catholic high school in California has turned a $15,000 investment made five years ago into a $24 million windfall after the company that created the mobile app Snapchat went public with an initial public offering of stock.

Because SNAP shares gained so much value, the company is already worth – on paper – more than household names like CBS and American Airlines.