Sources: Snap to publicly file for IPO late next week, which likely means a March IPO
The social communications company's current valuation is $25 billion, said sources. — According to sources, Snap Inc. plans to publicly file for its much-anticipated initial public offering late next week.
Context & Ripple Effects
Snap's road to this filing has been mapped out in stages across the past three months: October reports of a March 2017 IPO at $25B+, Bloomberg's follow-up that it would seek as much as $4B at a $25–35B valuation, and November's confirmation that Snap had filed confidentially. Today's report moves the process to its public phase — a filing late next week that points squarely at a March debut.
What changed is the number attached to it: sources now put the current valuation at $25 billion, sitting at the bottom of the range Bloomberg described and well below its $35B ceiling. The gap between the private mark and whatever public buyers will pay is the story to watch as the book builds.
First-order effects
- Snap employees and early backers get a dated liquidity event — a March IPO means lockup and selling timelines become concrete within weeks.
- The public filing forces Snap's financials into open view for the first time, ending the information asymmetry that existed since the confidential S-1.
Second-order effects
- If the deal prices below the $25–35B band Snap sought as much as $4B within, every late-stage consumer app that marked itself against Snap's private valuation faces markdown pressure in its next fundraise.
- Underwriters and exchanges competing for the listing will price the deal conservatively to guarantee a pop, which caps how much capital Snap actually banks versus the $4B aspiration.
Third-order effects
- The corpus already shows expectations compressing — from the $25–35B range down to a deal ultimately marketed at $14–$16 a share for roughly $18.5B — a preview of the systematic repricing private-market marks undergo when they meet public demand.
- A completed March listing would hand other long-private consumer internet companies a live template for timing their own filings against this window.
The trend: Consumer internet companies are reaching public markets years into heavy losses, and each high-profile listing shows private valuations compressing against what public buyers will actually pay.