Wall Street has gone crazy for disappearing message company Snap Inc., sending its shares up 44 percent from its $17 offering price on its opening day and nearly another 10 percent through late afternoon trading Friday in the biggest tech IPO since Alibaba.
But stock analysts aren’t nearly as euphoric, expressing concerns about its slowing growth and mounting losses. Snap reported a net loss of $515 million on $405 million in revenue in 2016, after losing $373 million on $59 million in revenue the year before.
Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, gave Snap a $10 price target — a 194 percent discount from its Friday high of $29.44 a share.
Wieser called Snap “a promising early-stage company,” but one that has to deal with tough, deep-pocketed competitors and slowing growth
Snap is “an upstart facing aggressive competition from much larger companies, with a core user base that is not growing by much and which is only relatively elusive,” Wieser wrote in a Thursday research note.
He also had concerns about the lack of voting rights Snap’s shares have, particularly with its two twenty-something founders, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, who are effectively driving the bus by themselves.
“Investors also will be exposed to what appears to be a sub-optimal corporate structure operated by a senior management team lacking experience transforming a successful new product into a successful company,” Wieser wrote.
Nomura Instinet analyst Anthony DiClemente set his price target for the company at $16 a share, $1 below its IPO price. In a Thursday note, DiClemente warned that Snap’s total user and revenue per user growth had begun to “meaningfully slow,” and its current valuation is at a premium that is tough to justify.
“We see Snap’s opportunity as constrained relative to expectations and, as such, we think shares are fairly valued at best at the IPO price,” DiClemente wrote.
Susquehanna initiated its coverage of Snap with a $22 price target — higher than Pivotal and Nomura, but still well below where Snap is currently trading.
“Euphoria could cause a short-term disconnect between fundamentals and valuation, but longer-term we struggle to see Snap as an investment with meaningful upside potential from current levels,” Susquehanna analyst Shyam Patil wrote in a Friday note. However, Patil said there could be some upside in the short run, saying that he “wouldn’t be surprised to see euphoria take the stock into the high $20s to low $30s.”
Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research who called Snap “total junk” in a January note, reiterated his negative outlook Friday.
“Let all the hot air go out, let the private investors cash out, let’s see how the industry evolves in 1.5 years,” he wrote.
10 Biggest Billion-Dollar Entertainment Deals in 2016 (Photos)
Media and entertainment dealmakers returned in full force this year after a quiet 2015, as there were nine mergers and acquisitions valued at more than $1 billion -- from Chinese buyers such as the Dalian Wanda Group to AT&T, which agreed to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion. Here's a rundown of the biggest.
Various
10. Disney buys a minority stake in BAMTech
Price tag: $1 billion
In August, the Mouse House announced that it paid $1 billion for a 33 percent stake in streaming video technology company BAMTech, which was spun off from Major League Baseball’s MLB Advanced Media. Disney plans to use BAMTech’s technology to launch a standalone ESPN streaming service – but without the same content as linear ESPN.
The real estate and entertainment conglomerate owned by China’s richest man continues to snap up showbiz companies by the billion, acquiring the Golden Globes and American Music Awards producer for a cool $1 billion earlier this month.
Dick Clark Productions
8. Rovi acquires TiVo
Price tag: $1.1 billion
Video technology firm Rovi Corp., bought the pioneering live-TV recording tech company for $1.1 billion in a deal that was finalized in September. After the deal was complete, Rovi adopted the better-known TiVo name.
Getty Images
7. AMC Theatres buys Carmike Cinemas
Price tag: $1.2 billion
Wanda-owned AMC Theatres acquired Carmike, the U.S.’ fourth-largest exhibitor, forming the biggest theater chain in the country with more than 600 theaters. That surpasses Regal Entertainment, which operates 565 locations.
AMC/Carmike
6. AMC Theatres buys Odeon & UCI Cinemas
Price tag: $1.2 billion
AMC also added Odeon & UCI Cinemas, Europe's biggest chain, to its ever-expanding suite of cinemas. AMC will rename the company to Odeon Cinemas Group and maintain its London headquarters.
AMC/Odeon & UCI
5. Dalian Wanda Group buys Legendary Entertainment
Price tag: $3.5 billion
Wanda was responsible for the first megadeal of 2016, when it acquired the “Jurassic World” production company for $3.5 billion. Legendary lost $500 million in 2015, but its action-packed fare such as “Warcraft” is popular in China’s fast-growing movie market.
Legendary/Wanda
4. Comcast's NBCUniversal buys DreamWorks
Price tag: $3.8 billion
The blowout success of animated films like “Zootopia” and “Finding Dory” was one of the stories of 2016, and NBCU doubled down on the genre by adding the “Kung Fu Panda” and “Shrek” studio to its fold.
DreamWorks
3. Lionsgate merges with Starz
Price tag: $4.4 billion
The “Hunger Games” studio and premium cable channel announced their merger plans in June, a year after telecom billionaire and major Starz shareholder John Malone bought a stake in Lionsgate. Starz will become an independently run subsidiary of Lionsgate once the deal is officially approved.
Lionsgate/Starz
2. Verizon buys Yahoo
Price tag: $4.8 billion – or maybe less
The embattled Internet 1.0 company finally found its lifeboat, selling its core business to Verizon for $4.8 billion in July, eight years after rejecting a $45 billion bid from Microsoft. But after the extent of Yahoo’s 2014 hack was revealed, Verizon was pushing for a $1 billion discount, and has been taking a second look at the deal.
Verizon/Yahoo
1. AT&T agrees to acquire Time Warner
Price tag: $85.4 billion
AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner, combining two century-old companies to create a content and distribution powerhouse in the biggest media deal since the ill-fated 2000 AOL-Time Warner merger. One caveat: Donald Trump, who has been an outspoken critic of Time Warner’s CNN, had threatened to block the deal. However, a Wall Street-friendly Republican Congress could provide a smoother path.
AT&T/Time Warner
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Rewind 2016: From China’s Dalian Wanda Group to AT&T, deep-pocketed buyers were chasing content all year
Media and entertainment dealmakers returned in full force this year after a quiet 2015, as there were nine mergers and acquisitions valued at more than $1 billion -- from Chinese buyers such as the Dalian Wanda Group to AT&T, which agreed to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion. Here's a rundown of the biggest.