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在三月二日进行公开募股，其26岁的老板成为亿万富翁，snap是snapchat的母公司，snapchat以其阅后即焚而流行于青少年之间。投资者是否会发财我们拭目以待。第一天，snap股价上涨44%，现在他们已经从最高点下跌了17，也就是说，短短几天，市值蒸发50亿。
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.
震荡或将持续，乐观者认为，随着用户的增长以及广告的收入，snap的市值会从今天的260亿上升4倍。近期鲜有大型互联网公司上市，这给了snap巨大的稀有价值。一位初创投资公司分析师说。
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.
但是持怀疑态度的人不断增加。每一位购买snap公司股票的分析师均给出了消极的评价。他们质疑公司的价值强调公司面临的挑战。snap最近几月成长缓慢。据估计，它所有可涉及的市场比Facebook小80%，后者在美国的渗透率已经达到50%。一位投行人士如是认为。
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有一套非常规的结构，这使得他们的股东实际上没有权力。因为这个原因，一组机构投资者游说像摩根士丹利这样的股指提供者，不要将snap纳入基准。虽然那不会影响股价的表现，但是被视为在公司管理上的异类没有好处。
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.
分析师也关注snap的损失，从5.15亿增加到2017年的37亿。而且那还没有包含给员工的股权激励。在2016年snap股权激励开销大约17亿，每人大约分得140万，相比之下，facebook平均每人23万，Google每人14.4万。这些都减少了投资者的收入。
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引领科技创业公司上市浪潮的希望很大。尽管股价会下降，但是他们中的很多会选择上市，特别是企业级软件公司，他们卖给其他公司IT工具。他们盈利比snap更可靠。一家软件公司，MuleSoft，预计下一周上市。这样的公司不会像snap以及其他公司那样接受严苛的检查，挺让人羡慕的。
个人观点
snap虽然如今仍然在亏损，但是其用户黏性无人能及，伴随着用户量以及广告收入的增加，会逐渐走出亏损泥潭
