Snap Inc soars in stockmarket debut, shares up 47%
Snap Inc's initial public offering dwarfed market expectations, with shares in the owner of the popular instant messaging app Snap Chat debuting on the stockmarket far above initial pricing and continuing to run up as investors chased the first technology IPO since December.
Stock in the video app maker was priced at $17, but started trading at $24.
It was the first tech IPO since Trivago, in December, and followed the slowest year for tech IPOs in 2016 since 2009, according to Dealogic.
The maker of the video app - which is used by 158m users daily - raised $3.4bn via the sale and fetched a market capitalisation of $19.7bn at the IPO price.
Snap Chat, which was founded in 2011, generated total revenues of $404.5m in 2016.