Snapchat Will Soon Be A Publicly Traded Company, Says CEO Evan Speigel
Snapchat CEO Evan Speigel has revealed that he plans to hold an initial public offering for the company. According to Reuters, there is no specific date when the IPO will occur. In a recent statement, Speigel hinted that the public trading of Snapchat is just one of many things he plans to do next for the company.
“We have to IPO. It’s just another dot on the list of things to do.”
This IPO comes after a history of offers to buy Snapchat, which Evan Speigel kept turning down. In 2013, after noticing a decrease in its teenage users, Facebook offered Snapchat $3 billion in cash for the company. When asked about his offer, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly refused to give a clear response. Instead, a spokeswoman for Facebook spoke on his behalf.
“We don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”
Rumors or not, Snapchat had become the subject of chatter and was being watched by Chinese e-commerce company Tencent Holdings. Such an investment was thought to place a new value on Snapchat of $4 billion. Later, Alibaba invested $200 million, valuing Snapchat at $15 billion. Though Snapchat has attracted so much interest over the years, the company still has not reached the value of it’s other app competitors. In 2013, when Snapchat was receiving many offers, Twitter was valued at $25 billion. Since that time, the value of Twitter has increased. Also, Pinterest, which was valued at 3.8 billion during that time, has grown to be valued at $11 billion and is thought to be growing even more.
As Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook suspected, Snapchat’s strength appears to be in its teen demographic. Because Snapchat is a free messaging app, it is able to be use with a simple WiFi connection on a smartphone. This is particularly attractive to teenagers and young adults who may not have jobs to pay for service on the cellular devices. Facebook, being a social network, doesn’t really have the same capabilities, even with FB Messenger.
With Snapchat now reaching a valuation of $15 billion, an IPO was only a matter of time. Evan Speigel recently unveiled Discover, which is a new addition to the Snapchat app which allows users to consume small news content. The new addition is quite similar to FB’s recent news content launch. Snapchat appears to be keeping up with the competition, though — Speigel refuses to give any specifics on his competition in his various interviews. Instead, the Snapchat mastermind revealed the exciting analytics of Snapchat, which shows that the app gets 65 million sends per day.
