The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Snap — the now-parent company of Snapchat — is working on an initial public offering for as early as March that could value the company at $25 billion or higher.
The company most recently raised $1.8 billion in a financing round in May this year. The company has around 150 million daily active users, and leaked documents reported by TechCrunch showed that it was projecting it could generate as much as $1 billion in revenue in 2017. The company estimated, according to those documents, that it would generate between $250 million and $350 million for 2016.
While it’s raised a ton of money so far, there’s always need for more. The company could use a war chest to continue building out new products — including hardware like its Spectacles glasses, which, while priced cheaply, may be a loss-leader as it tries to gather adoption across a wider demographic. It could also use the cash for acquisitions, such as acquiring Bitstrips, the makers of Bitmoji, for something “in the ballpark” of $100 million.
To be sure, the $25 billion or more figure represents a pretty wide range, and often the details don’t get hammered out until bankers begin to price out the company’s public offering. But with Snapchat showing immense growth from both a user and revenue perspective — and engagement that has marketers salivating — it seems like it’s on track to continue to generate an enormous amount of interest from Wall Street.
Facebook’s advertising business continues to chug along as what would likely be considered the primary competitor, and, after failing to snap up the company, it’s thrown an enormous amount of effort at copying and beating out Snapchat’s features. Today, even, Instagram began touting that it had 100 million daily active users for its Stories feature — which CEO Kevin Systrom actually admitted was a clone of Snapchat’s features.
With the two companies vying for marketing dollars, it appears that Snapchat has enough of an argument for Wall Street that it’s on its way to growing beyond its last post-money $20 billion valuation. With many of the largest IPOs this year being largely successful enterprise company IPOs, it appears that the window may be open for Snap to step in and pick up interest from Wall Street — though Snap would certainly be the largest one in recent years.
A Snapchat representative said the company isn’t commenting on rumors or speculation around its financing plans.