Newsletter 
Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, finally went public today. They held their IPO this morning, which opened at about $24. However, they started things last night, coming in at $17 per share, which was pretty respectable and helped them raise about $3.4 billion. That’s a 44% rise on opening day, so to say that this IPO was not a much anticipated one, would be wrong. This morning, they opened at $24, and now trading is around $24.48 which is about a 2% rise, it had gone as high as $26.05 during the day, but for now, it definitely looks like investors are interested in Snap.
This increase on the first day is actually higher than Facebook and Alibaba when they went public. Which were the last two big tech IPO’s, Snap beat Alibaba in price per share, but fell behind Facebook, which was to be expected since Facebook had been around much longer and were actually a profitable company at the time. They also beat most other tech IPO’s as far as first day trading goes. So everything’s looking good for Snap. However, they are going to need to find a way to make a profit, which they have yet to do. Now they are bringing in revenue, but not profit. Which means they are spending more than they are making. Currently, Snap’s revenues are coming from ads, Discover in Snapchat and Spectacles.
Snap has two businesses right now. There’s the social network Snapchat which has been growing like crazy over the past few years – in fact, Snapchat now serves up more video than Facebook, who has many, many more monthly active users (or MAUs) than Snapchat. There’s also Spectacles, which is basically a pair of glasses that have a camera built-in, so you can Snapchat straight from your face. This allows users to see exactly what you’re seeing, which can be a pretty incredible experience, especially if you are at the Super Bowl, or the Olympics, or some big event like that. Snap will need to find a way to make some more money from these two businesses, otherwise those investors that are trading Snap right now on the New York Stock Exchange will change their mind and sell their stocks.