Snapchat IPO Filing Reveals Huge Risks, Stunning Losses for Social Media Giant
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Version 0 of 1. Snap Inc., the parent company of popular messaging app Snapchat, officially filed its paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The move is an incremental step ahead of its long-awaited initial public offering. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2016, Snap said it had a net loss of $514.6 million on $404 million in revenue. That's compared to a net loss of $372.9 million on $58.7 million in revenue during the prior year. Snap plans to list Class A, non-voting common stock under the symbol "SNAP" on the New York Stock Exchange. Snap filed its IPO paperwork confidentially in November and is expected to go public at a valuation between $20 billion and $25 billion in March. The offering will allow founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy to stay in control of the company. Snapchat noted that it generates "substantially all" of its revenue from advertising, noting that it comprised 96% of its revenue in 2016, a reliance, the company said, could pose a risk to its business in the future, along with continued difficulty in penetrating the Chinese market, among other things. On average, users that were 25 years old and above visited Snapchat 12 times and spent about 20 minutes on the platform every day in 2016, according to the filing. Snap's listing would be the largest U.S.-listed technology offering since the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (BABA) went public at $168 billion in 2014. Snapchat had 158 million daily active users in the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2016, up 48% year-over-year from the same period last year, according to the filing. "For example, Instagram, a subsidiary of Facebook, recently introduced a 'stories' feature that largely mimics our Stories feature and may be directly competitive," the filing stated. "We also face competition from traditional and online media businesses for advertising budgets." Meanwhile, Snapchat's formidable opponent Instagram has 400 million daily active users, Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company's earnings call Wednesday. Facebook is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells FB? Learn more now. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and Credit Suisse are the top underwriters for Snap's IPO, the filing states. Cooley LLP is acting counsel for the company, while Goodwin Procter LLP is providing legal advice to the underwriters. Editor's note: This story was originally published on Feb. 2 at 5:25 PM and has been updated. |