IPO Boutique Brief – Snap making its way?

The most high-profile IPO of 2017, Snap Inc., continues to leak information that an official IPO filing is imminent. The latest ‘drip’ comes from Recode’s Kara Swisher who reported late Friday night that Snap will officially file sometime later this week and possibly seek up to a $25bn valuation. Reuters is reporting that SnapChat will list on the NYSE.

IPO investors — Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are reportedly the leads — a good sign considering these two underwriters’ track record — each returned IPO investors an average of 16.4% premium at first trade in 2016.

While a private filing has reportedly already occurred, this filing would be significant and allow the public to look into the financials of the company.

We have wrote extensively on Snap getting its house in order ahead of its IPO and how they want to maintain power thru unorthodox voting regulations within its shares. We invite you to read those articles.

How large will this offering be?

I think you have to look at the offerings of two competitors: Facebook and Twitter. Facebook raised $18.4bn — the second largest US IPO of all-time while Twitter’s offering netted the company $1.82bn. Yes, that’s quite a large spread.

In our opinion, $3-5bn raised would seem like a good number to start with. But given the company’s visibility and desire for this high-profile deal to come to market, it would not surprise us to see Snap tap the public market for even more.

What is certain — the public has taken notice to every drip of news and is eager to look into this high-profile IPO in 2017.