WHEN Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, an app popular among teenagers for its disappearing messages, staged a public offering on March 2nd, Evan Spiegel, its 26-year-old boss, became a self-made billionaire. (Only John Collison of Stripe, an online payments startup, rivals him for such youthful tycoonery). Whether public-market investors will strike it rich remains to be seen. In its first day of trading Snap’s shares rose by 44%; they have since fallen by 16% from their peak, meaning around $5bn of market value vanished in days.
snap在三月二日進行公開募股，其26歲的老板成為億萬富翁，snap是snapchat的母公司，snapchat以其閱后即焚而流行于青少年之間。投資者是否會發(fā)財我們拭目以待。第一天，snap股價上漲44%，現在他們已經從最高點下跌了17，也就是說，短短幾天，市值蒸發(fā)50億。
The volatility will probably continue. Optimists reckon that Snap’s market value could increase more than fourfold from around $26bn today as it adds users and advertisers. Very few large internet companies have gone public recently, which gives it tremendous scarcity value, says Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures, an early-stage investment firm.
震蕩或將持續(xù)，樂觀者認為，隨著用戶的增長以及廣告的收入，snap的市值會從今天的260億上升4倍。近期鮮有大型互聯網公司上市，這給了snap巨大的稀有價值。一位初創(chuàng)投資公司分析師說。
But sceptics are growing in number. Every analyst who has started covering Snap’s stock has issued a negative rating. They question its high valuation and underline all the challenges. Snap’s growth has slowed in recent months. Its total addressable market is estimated to be 80% smaller than that of Facebook, a social network, and it already has 50% penetration among its potential user base in America, reckons Laura Martin of Needham, an investment bank.
但是持懷疑態(tài)度的人不斷增加。每一位購買snap公司股票的分析師均給出了消極的評價。他們質疑公司的價值強調公司面臨的挑戰(zhàn)。snap最近幾月成長緩慢。據估計，它所有可涉及的市場比Facebook小80%，后者在美國的滲透率已經達到50%。一位投行人士如是認為。
Snap also has an unconventional structure that gives shareholders virtually no power. This week it emerged that a group of large institutional investors had lobbied stock-index providers such as MSCI not to include Snap in their benchmarks for that reason. That will not directly affect share-price performance yet, but being viewed as an outlier on corporate governance does not help.
snap有一套非常規(guī)的結構，這使得他們的股東實際上沒有權力。因為這個原因，一組機構投資者游說像摩根士丹利這樣的股指提供者，不要將snap納入基準。雖然那不會影響股價的表現，但是被視為在公司管理上的異類沒有好處。
Analysts have also drawn attention to Snap’s losses. These could well rise from 515m last year to a whopping 3.7bn in 2017, according to Pivotal Research Group, a research firm. And that does not include huge stock grants to employees. In 2016 Snap had stock-based compensation expenses of around 1.7bn, or roughly 1.4m per employee, compared with Facebook’s average of 230,000 and Google’s 144,000 per employee. These grants dilute investors.
分析師也關注snap的損失，從5.15億增加到2017年的37億。而且那還沒有包含給員工的股權激勵。在2016年snap股權激勵開銷大約17億，每人大約分得140萬，相比之下，facebook平均每人23萬，Google每人14.4萬。這些都減少了投資者的收入。
Before the offering, hopes had been high that Snap would spark a wave of public offerings by tech startups. Even if its shares sink further, many of them could still choose to go public, especially enterprise-software firms, which sell IT tools to other businesses. Their revenues are more reliable than those of Snap. One software company, MuleSoft, is likely to go public next week. Such companies do not attract the relentless public scrutiny that Snap and other tech stars do. Increasingly, that looks enviable.
在募股之前，snap引領科技創(chuàng)業(yè)公司上市浪潮的希望很大。盡管股價會下降，但是他們中的很多會選擇上市，特別是企業(yè)級軟件公司，他們賣給其他公司IT工具。他們盈利比snap更可靠。一家軟件公司，MuleSoft，預計下一周上市。這樣的公司不會像snap以及其他公司那樣接受嚴苛的檢查，挺讓人羨慕的。
個人觀點
snap雖然如今仍然在虧損，但是其用戶黏性無人能及，伴隨著用戶量以及廣告收入的增加，會逐漸走出虧損泥潭
