According to sources provided by the Wall Street Journal, Snapchat is looking to go public as soon as March 2017, and word on the street is that parent company Snap Inc. has marked its flagship project at a $25 billion dollar valuation.
This marks a huge increase in its valuation during a span of only five months, after the company entered a funding round in May at a valuation of just under $18 billion. If Snapchat does indeed go public, it could very well be the first of many private Silicon Valley tech enterprises including Uber, Pinterest, and more.
That said, the company’s income over the past two years has led to plenty of doubts about the ultra-high valuations that private tech companies in the ‘Silicon Valley bubble’ place on themselves. Fiscal 2015 saw the company generate just $60 million in revenue, and while the 2016 fiscal year may see anywhere between $250 million and $350 million, that’s still a far cry from the $25 billion valuation they have placed on themselves.
Snapchat is optimistic that it can generate as much as $1 billion in 2017, as the app currently has an ever-increasing user base of 150 million. As things stand, the company has only just started to scratch the surface of ad revenue and may pull in $1 billion at 2017’s close, an increase of 151% from this year and an even greater exponential increase from the $60 million they pulled in from ad revenue in 2015.
It’s going to be interesting to see what will happen with Snapchat’s decision to go public, but either way, plenty of other tech companies will be paying close attention as they start to test the waters of the stock market.
H/T: Wall Street Journal / The Atlantic