Snapchat's Success May Lead To Uber And Airbnb IPOs
CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 3/6/2017, 10:45 a.m.
The photo-sharing app Snapchat offers a false sense of privacy by promising it will erase photos.
Credit:
Gwen Sung/CNN Money
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's only been public for three days, but Snap Inc.'s successful market debut might be just what the IPO market needs.
Shares of Snap, the parent of the popular app Snapchat, are up more than 50% from their offering price after surging Thursday and rising again Friday, even though they fell 7% Monday morning.
So the initial public offering window may now suddenly be wide open for many so-called unicorns, private companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion.
If Snap can convince investors to buy its stock despite slowing user growth and a history of operating losses, then maybe Uber, Airbnb, China's Xiaomi and big data firm Palantir could soon test the public's appetite for their stocks too.
Those three, like Snap, are among the biggest of the unicorns. They all have valuations above $10 billion and have even been dubbed "dekakorns" -- a group that also includes Uber rival/partner Didi, WeWork. Pinterest, Flipkart and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
"I'm not surprised that Snap has done this well," said Trevor Williams, a portfolio manager with Penn Mutual Asset Management, which invested in Snap before it started trading. "There is a thirst for something like this."
But even though Snap is off to a hot start so far, many other big unicorns may still want to take their sweet time going public. Wall Street has proven to be an unforgiving place for buzzy companies that fail to deliver on lofty promises.
For every Facebook or Google, a company that goes public and continues to grow and mature, there are many more examples of IPOs that failed to live up to considerable hype.
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