Skip to main content

It’s finally happening — Snap Inc. expected to file for IPO next week

The first big IPO of 2017 is here. After months of speculation, anticipation, and consternation, one of the biggest social media platforms in the world is going public — Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat. As originally reported by Recode on Friday, the highly secretive Venice, California-based company will file sometime late next week, which means that Snap will ultimately go public around March (it generally takes about nine weeks between the filing and the official deed).

In anticipation of its IPO, Snap is slated to publicize the registration document it filed privately with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year, which will reveal its financials and strategy for operating as a publicly traded organization. Snap Inc. has yet to comment on these reports.

Recommended Videos

Valuations for the six-year-old social media platform are as high as $25 billion. If this figure holds, it would make it the largest American tech IPO since Facebook’s in 2012. As Reuters reported, Snapchat will likely offer its new investors “no-vote” shares when it IPOs, which would “deny investors voting power over the company’s corporate decisions,” allowing co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy to exercise more control along with Snap’s board.

As of today, Snapchat boasts more than 100 million active users, most of whom are in the highly valuable 13 to 24-year-old demographic. Millennials, after all, are some of advertisers’ most lucrative targets. That said, Snapchat is looking to diversify its appeal, and at a private meeting at a Morgan Stanley conference last year, Spiegel reportedly told an audience that half the app’s new users were over 25.

While many have been eagerly awaiting Snap’s IPO, some experts remain a bit more skeptical. “We are at the tail end of the social media boom. Novelty is giving way to fatigue,” wrote Trip Chowdhry, managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research. “Fundamental investors should avoid the IPO. Snapchat is a total junk, hyper-inflated.”

We’ll just have to wait a couple months more to see if he’s correct.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
Virgin Orbit will livestream its next rocket mission. Here’s what to expect
Virgin Orbit rocket

Virgin Orbit is developing a system that sends satellites into space using a rocket launched from a jumbo jet.

The company completed its first successful mission in January, and later this month it’s aiming to repeat the process in a flight that will deploy seven satellites.

Read more
Rocket Lab to attempt its first booster recovery next week
rocket lab to attempt its first booster recovery next week

Road To Reusability

Any company serious about building a viable satellite-launch business needs to be able to recover and reuse as many parts of its rocket system as possible.

Read more
Dashlane simplifies digital credential management for people, teams and businesses
Dashlane credential management tool for teams featured image

Have you ever considered a credential management tool for your team or business? Allow me to explain. When it comes to digital and online safety, something you hear often is never to share your credentials, account details, or passwords with anyone. You're not supposed to share account details or passwords, even with people you know well. That's not necessarily because they can't be trusted, it's more that you never know how someone else will handle your sensitive information. If they stow it somewhere easily accessible, like in a plain text document on their desktop, it weakens your security and makes your accounts more vulnerable. Plus, there’s no telling who they’ll share that information with.

Keeping your logins to yourself is also how you’re advised to protect professional or business accounts in the workplace. But it makes things more difficult, especially when you’re working with a team. Sometimes, you need tool or platform logins to be available to everyone. There is a much better way to administrate password sharing, and most importantly, it doesn’t compromise security. The answer is a digital credential management tool like Dashlane.

Read more