The Snap IPO: Trump agenda fuels an orgy of speculation
3 March 2017
Shares of Snap Inc., the maker of the Snapchat messaging app, surged 44 percent Thursday after its initial public offering (IPO). The firm, which has a miniscule number of employees, has never turned a profit and lost $514.6 million last year, is now valued higher than the retailing giant Target, which employs over 300,000 people.
Within seconds of trading in the stock getting underway, an hour and a half or so after they had rung the opening bell, the wealth of each of the company’s two co-founders, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, was boosted to $5.3 billion as the shares jumped from an initial price of $17 to more than $24—a leap of 44 percent. They rose even further during the course of the day before falling back slightly at close of trading. Others also benefited, including the venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners which made $903 million and $613 million respectively.
The explosion in the value of Snap shares is illustrative of two interconnected processes. It is a further demonstration of the rise of parasitism at the heart of the US economy and financial system. At the same time, it is another graphic endorsement by Wall Street and US financial elites of the policies of the Trump administration aimed at setting loose the “animal spirits” of capitalist money-making, free from any government control or regulations.
The fact that Snap Inc. has warned that it may never turn a profit did not prevent a rush for the stock. Speculators salivated not so much on the prospect that Snapchat’s 158 million users, sending more than 2.5 billion images and messages every day and concentrated in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, could be a lucrative source of revenue….