Snapchat Files For a $3 Billion IPO (theverge.com) 55
Snapchat has filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange today, picking the ticker symbol "SNAP." The company hopes to raise $3 billion and says it has 158 million daily active users. The IPO would reportedly value the company above $20 billion. The Verge reports: The filing comes at an exciting but challenging time for Snap. The company -- originally named Snapchat -- has declared its intentions to become -- a camera company -- rather than just an app developer. And it's already found some success with Spectacles, its fun pair of video-recording sunglasses. The company says its advertising business is growing quickly. It reported $58.7 million in revenue for 2015, and grew that to $404.5 million in 2016. Along with that strong revenue growth, however, its losses also swelled. Snapchat lost $372.9 million in 2015 and $514.6 million this past year, more than its total revenue. Twitter was also struggling to generate a profit when it went public, while Facebook was not. Here's a gem from the S-1 filing. "We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability." Sounds like a great investment!
so i guess that means.. (Score:3, Insightful)
the bubble hasn't burst yet.
Re: (Score:1)
Why not work on your programming skills instead of typing on Slashdot.
"social" runs on code (Score:3)
This is categorically incorrect.
First, all that "social" has to run somehow....and it is people with "skills" that do the "relevant" programming.
The idea that what people call "social" is somehow supplanting the need for software devs and coders is actually ridiculous. All that "social" is coded and hosted and maintained by software devs and coders!
2nd, the whole context
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I mean not that much...
I'll give you maybe a "whosh"....I did say this:
this makes me think you are being sarcastic...honestly...
So I thought something was up. Truth is I know too many people on every side of the equation that think the way OP does so it's not out of question that OP was being serious.
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nah, 17 years ago it took a few of these turds to burst the bubble. I think the last one was CueCat which blew through $250 million in a few months. but they invented the QR code all those years ago
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Nope, it was simply a scam. QR code first and industry standard developed by NTT in Japan.
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They may have created a similar use case to today's QR codes, but the Cuecat was a 1D scanner and couldn't dream of reading QR codes. Also, QR codes already existed by then. Created by Denso Wave [wikipedia.org], not NTT - they just created some plain text encoding formats that lots of people adopted.
It'll sell like hotcakes. (Score:1)
"We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability." Sounds like a great investment!
I'm seeing a lot of the same attitude that I saw in the late 90s in the stock market. People buying stocks based upon hype and nothing else - even when the company is in horrible financial shape.
And then there's the greater fool theory - "I know this is a shitty investment, but there are really dumb people out there that will buy it and make it go higher because it's a 'tech' company!"
Fitbit is an example of when it fails and Tesla is an example of when it works.
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but eyeballs and cash burn rate is all that matter
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Then by that same metric then Uber should be worth about $100 trillion in phony Wall Street valuation.
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In all fairness you should note that sentence is really just legal CYA on their part. Obviously they intend to achieve and maintain profitability.
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Of course it is. On the other hand, only Internet companies can give themselves huge valuations and get listed on the stock exchange after years of significant losses, while still running losses as big as their turnover. No other type of company can even survive that long without making profit, or even without any serious roadmap on how to become profitable.
Where are the costs (Score:3)
I'm just curious what percentage of the costs are server/bandwidth/storage and what percentage are marketing and what percentage are development. Do the filings tell us?
William -- Shatner (Score:5, Funny)
Original punctuation style. Shit and wrong, but original.
Re: (Score:2)
No UTF-8 support, and I highly doubt – or — are going to do any good. "A camera company" was supposed to be in quotes, but /. mangled the curly double quotes, too - and I guess the submitter forgot what the original text said by that point.
An experiment: – — “ ”
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I'm genuinely surprised that any of that worked. Well then...
The company—originally named Snapchat—has declared its intentions to become “a camera company” rather than just an app developer.
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To boldy snap, where no apps have snapped before! These are the IPOs of the app-ship Snapchat!
Capital Asset Pricing Model (Score:2)
The IPO would reportedly value the company above $20 billion.
"We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability."
We had CAPM [wikipedia.org] drilled into us when I was in business school back in the 80's. I guess no one on Wall Street uses it anymore. :-(
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The failure of the economy implies that they're wrong.
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I see that you do not understand Wall Street what so ever. Here let me explain it for you, they sell the product, they do not keep the product, they take a percentage from the sale. Need I remind of the too big to fail banks and them selling crap assets to their customers telling them how great they were and making ever more money by betting those assets would lose value.
It is not what the dot.bomb is worth, it is how much you make selling it.
The mind boggles as to what a new digital company that actually
Apps guy this is your hour! (Score:1)
Apps guy where are you?
That's like 50c per person on the planet (Score:2)
50 cents per person on the planet ... for a company that doesn't make (or make anything that can make) anything you can drive, eat or wear.
Does anyone know Sean Hannigan's phone number, 'cos I'm calling him.
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Does approximation trigger your assburgers?
Dot-bomb? What's a dot-bomb? (Score:3)
"We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability."
Has the ENTIRE concept of profitability gone out the fucking window when it comes to running a company? I don't even know what we legally define as a scam anymore when companies that project running in the red forever file for IPOs.
Not even in the era of the dot-bomb were vaporware pimps arrogant enough to blatantly admit the proposed company would be a failure from a financial standpoint. In fact, stupidity has reached a level where investors have apparently forgotten why we refer to it as the dot bomb. It's as if the S-1 filing statement is some kind of troll test.
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When your losses exceed your revenue, you're already bankrupt. I'll do simple math below to understand.
100 Revenue
250 Expenses
------
150 Loss.
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When your losses exceed your revenue, you're already bankrupt. I'll do simple math below to understand.
100 Revenue
250 Expenses
------
billion-dollar company.
There you go, FTFY.
You seem to confused regarding the "new" math written by the infamous Millennial scholar, Hype N. Bullshyt.
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"We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability."
I don't even know what we legally define as a scam anymore when companies that project running in the red forever file for IPOs.
A scam is when you try to hoodwink someone. This is more like the Pet Rock. It's very clear what you're buying if you decide to take that leap. It's actually a little refreshing to have someone say, "we have absolutely zero chance of ever turning a profit. Can we have some money, please?"
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"We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability."
I don't even know what we legally define as a scam anymore when companies that project running in the red forever file for IPOs.
A scam is when you try to hoodwink someone. This is more like the Pet Rock. It's very clear what you're buying if you decide to take that leap. It's actually a little refreshing to have someone say, "we have absolutely zero chance of ever turning a profit. Can we have some money, please?"
Watching anyone come forth with a pre-IPO valuation of 3 billion dollars for a company that labels perpetual losses as some kind of corporate motto is about as refreshing as the concept of Donald Trump starring in one of those slow-motion Pantene shampoo commercials.
Why even bother making a product anymore when we can just go back to the vaporware days of selling hype and bullshit.
We've seen this before... (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?
Exodus Communication circa 2000*: "It is possible that we may never achieve profitability on a quarterly or an annual basis."
Exodus Communications history:
* See https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e... [sec.gov]
Stock Price (Score:2)
Ok so the Stock started at $178.42.
The Stock Ended the day at: $169.90 (Low of $133.00)
The Snap IPO filing also discloses a lot of elements of the Snapchat company that may scare investors off, or at least they should.
For one thing, there's the shareholder-unfriendly corporate governance structure that gives 26-year-old CEO Evan Spiegel near absolute control,
or the fact that Snap says it doesn't have any intention of paying cash dividends, possibly ever.
or how absurdly expensive it will be, Snapchat has rep
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Snap warns in its IPO filing that its expenses are also increasing rapidly, and could outpace revenue growth for a long time. The number of Snapchat employees for one, more than tripled to 1,859 in 2016.
What are all those people doing for what is basically a communications app?
video-recording sunglasses (Score:2)
.COM bubble 2.0 for sure (Score:2)
I will be shorting SNAP as well.
I plan on retiring in 15 years a wealthy man.