03 March 2017•Update: 08 March 2017
By Ovunc Kutlu
NEW YORK
Shares of popular video social network Snapchat parent, Snap Inc,. soared 44 percent Thursday in its initial public offering (IPO).
Snap started trading at $17 per share shortly before 11.20 a.m. eastern U.S. time (1620GMT) and quickly rose with high demand.
During trading hours, Snap’s stock rose as much as 53 percent to $26.05.
The stock closed at $24.48 and gave the company a market valuation of approximately $34 billion -- the largest IPO since Alibaba in 2014.
At the time of their IPOs, Alibaba’s market value was set at $25 billion, while Facebook had a valuation of $16 billion in 2012 and Twitter's was $11 billion in 2013.
Snap gained $3.4 billion after selling 200 million shares. The company has been in dire need of cash after posting a net loss of $372.9 million in 2015 and $514.6 million the following year.
Some analysts, however, warned investors about concerns surrounding the company.
"Investors in Snap will be exposed to an upstart facing aggressive competition from much larger companies, with a core user base that is not growing by much and which is only relatively elusive," analyst Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research wrote in a note, according to financial insight website Seeking Alpha.
"It has a promising and innovative advertising offering, but so far it is still mostly unproven and difficult to quantify its ultimate scale," he added.
Snapchat has a user base of 158 million that send 2.5 billion daily messages on average, according to Snap's IPO filing.
