Snapchat’s sought after shares is set to debut for trading on Thursday in New York. The popular chat app has made successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) with a value of more than $3.4 billion. As reported by Snap Inc’s owner, the record achieved from the Snapchat IPO was above the company’s expectations. The subscribers for Snap’s IPO were more than ten times of the expectation. This indicates that people are hungry for the shares, which are predicted to buzz the market.

The First Run of Snapchat IPO Was a Great Success

To prepare for the first trading day, the New York Stock Exchange conducted a trial trading last week. The trial run aimed at making sure that the IPO goes smoothly, as it would be expected to be third-biggest technology IPO.  Of course, NYSE does not want to write the similar experience, when Facebook Inc’s IPO was corrupted by technological failure at Nasdaq.

The trial run was a success. The initial price at IPO was $17 a share, and the market value was almost $24 billion. This record was more than two times of what Twitter Inc achieved and the richest valuation in tech IPO during the last five years in the United States. The last rich IPO valuation was made by Facebook five years ago. The IPO was a test for the investor appetite for the stocks of social media app. As a matter of fact, Snapchat is popular chatting app among teenagers and millennial (particularly under 30 years of old). The app is known for disappearing messages and funny faces.

Snapchat is different from two prior chatting apps, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook was launched amid the popularity of desktop-based chat, while Twitter was launched in text-based mobile communication. On the other hand, Snapchat is launched in the era of photos and videos, along with creativity that allows the teens and millennial to create and shares funny projects.

Aside from Successful Record of Snapchat IPO

Even though Snapchat’s stock price was above its expected range – from $14 to $16 a share, the company actually reported an increased loss by 38% last year. The Los Angeles-based company was faced with tighter competition from more established rivals, such as Facebook’s Instagram that offers a similar platform.

Snapchat’s growth has slowed since Instagram launched Instagram’s feature that allows the users to play videos and show photos to their friends for 24 hours. The feature just looks like Snapchat’s Stories. In the first semester of 2016, the chat app reported impressive growth, as it could record additional 36 million active users. It slowed to 15 millions in the second semester of 2016.

Despite the concern with the corporate management over the past few years, the investors did not want to lose the chance to buy the shares. This 5-year old company is optimistic to be able to double its revenues in 2017. The initial run had showed how important Snapchat is for its users. The success of Snapchat IPO is expected to encourage other tech startups. Let’s see whether the expectation comes true in the real trading at NYSE.