Snap sets company’s valuation at $24bn for its IPO

Snap is going public with a valuation of $24 billion and a per share price of $17, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Apparently, despite all the hiccups like slowing user growth and rising burn, seems like Wall Street still has big hopes with Snap. The company is planning to raise somewhere around $3.4 billion in its public offering and at the moment that looks very much achievable.

Snap filed to go public in early February, showing a rapidly accelerating advertising business that went from $59 million in revenue in 2015 to nearly $400 million in 2016. But its user growth has slowed down drastically and the cost of its revenues is almost touching $450 million.

Meanwhile, Snap is selling non-voting shares in its IPO, that implies that the investors buying into the company will not have any say on its direction and that they are merely placing their money on faith that Spiegel and his team will do things right. You can buy all of the stock and you will still have no say in how the company is run.

Snap had set an initial price range of $14 to $16 per share and said it was aiming to sell 200 million shares, meaning it would raise between $2.8 billion and $3.2 billion. But it is going slightly above its estimated range.

The company’s shares will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tomorrow, and that will reveal the true worth of tech stocks this year.