Snap’s stock rises further the day after its biggest jump since IPO
Snap Inc.’s stock rose again Thursday after shares of the Snapchat maker enjoyed their best daily gain since the day of the company’s stock market debut in March.
The stock was up 51 cents, or 3%, to $16.49 a share in midday trading after surging 11.4% on Wednesday following a positive report from a Wall Street analyst. Snap has a total market value of $19.8 billion.
Even so, the stock remained below the $17 a share at which Los Angeles-based Snap went public March 2.
Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju on Wednesday raised his target price for the stock to $20 a share from $17 after he “modestly increased” his estimate of Snapchat’s daily active users in North America in the third quarter to 78.2 million, up from 75 million in the second quarter.
Snap reported 173 million daily active users worldwide in the second quarter. Despite the popularity of Snapchat, the company remains unprofitable. It lost $443 million in the second quarter, although part of that loss included costs related to employee stock-compensation awards.
Ju also reiterated that Snapchat “offers advertisers access to a coveted younger demographic” but he cautioned that Snap continues to face competition “from a long list of well-heeled global competitors,” including Facebook Inc. and its Instagram unit.
Snap’s biggest single-day gain was the date of its much ballyhooed IPO. The day after, its stock traded as high as $27.09 a share. The stock then gradually moved lower in the following months, bottoming at $11.83 a share on Aug. 11, before starting to rebound.
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