It appears the initial public offering market is indeed waking
up. Last Thursday, Snap Inc. raised $3.4 billion in its IPO onto
the New York Stock Exchange. OK not the biggest ever, since Alibaba
raised almost $22 billion in 2014. But it's the biggest tech
IPO since the Amazon of China smashed the records. Snap, which of
course owns the wildly popular app Snapchat, sold IPO shares at $17
and closed up over 40% on the first day. It rode up a little the
next few days and is now back to where it closed on Thursday. Still
pretty good. The company is valued now at roughly $24 billion.
Three years ago Facebook offered to buy the company for $3
billion.
In a funny side story, several other companies with
"Snap" in their name also shot up on Thursday in apparent
investor confusion. That includes Snap Interactive, another app
company, and Snap-On, the well-known tool company. Will we see
trademark infringement cases? Not likely.