Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Snap falls to IPO price

usatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 253 posts

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#221

Post by NDT »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #210
chillacy wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe FB messenger now has secret/disappearing messages as a response to snapchat, but before that it was a pretty clear distinction: if I send you a goofy selfie on snapchat it's gone in 10 seconds. If I send you a goofy selfie on messenger, you could always scroll up to see it again. And share it with others if you so choose.

I guess the part I'm missing is why you care whether the goofy selfie disappears.

It's psychological. As soon as you put something on FB, Twitter, etc. it's no longer "yours". Snapchat makes conversations and pictures disposable. It's just fast and ugly. And it powers the app by nudging by users into creating content to send to a friend without having to worry about rehearsing for the perfect picture/tweet/etc.

Also it's private. Facebook is mainly used by people with friends and family. Celebrities/notable figures rarely interact with others outside of Twitter. But even with Twitter, the interactions are permanent -- even when tweets are deleted.

On and it's great for sexting, which let's not kid ourselves, was the original appeal and still is for a lot of people in their target demographic.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#222

Post by boobsbr »

fergie wrote: post #215
__jal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is a panopticon with a massive dataset on each user, and has a pretty substantial moat by way of users 'punishing' each other for leaving, among other competitive advantages. Snapchat is a trendy app that could easily become uncool, and when it does, I don't see how users feel much of a penalty for leaving in the same way FB users do.

> Facebook ... has a pretty substantial moat by way of users 'punishing' each other for leaving What do you mean by this?

I think it's because you might lose contact with people if you don't have a FB profile.

If you're not on FB and don't interact with your 'friends' frequently, people kinda forget you exist and stop talking to you, and friendships wither. Even geographically close friendships.

Kinda like being ostracised.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#225

Post by soVeryTired »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #44
habosa wrote: post #10

$17.00 was the IPO price but only for investors with access. Your average investor with an eTrade account saw a price of $24.00+ when the market opened that morning, and it hit almost $27.00 that day. So those folks have seen a 30%+ drop since IPO. Given that Snap paid out billions in IPO bonuses to executives and other employees, it's turned out to be a pretty big wealth transfer from retail investors to Snap employ…

And they can also re-invest in the stock now, at these great sale prices. “And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful” - Warren Buffett

Buffet also uses metrics like Price / Earnings. Not sure he'd be interested in a company that posted a loss of 2Bn on revenues of 150m.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#226

Post by Simon_says »

jiqiren wrote: post #196
jpatokal wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what problems are these? The article mentions that institutional investors were unhappy about not getting their usual 15% guaranteed bounce, but it seems to have worked pretty well for Google and general investors.

I don't think you read closely enough. On the low-end, banks were thinking $108 for the base price per share. As it was, the IPO ended up at $85/share because of it being a dutch-auction where most investors played it safe and did low bids. As soon as the IPO executed (at $85) it popped anyway to $100. So Google potentially lost out on $23/share (minus 7-8% cut from banks). https://www.quora.com/How-was-Googles-IPO-u…

"Play it safe" doesn't make sense in this context. Dutch auctions' purpose is to incentivize buyers to bid the highest price they're willing to pay.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#227

Post by simonh »

Simon_says wrote: post #226
jiqiren wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read closely enough. On the low-end, banks were thinking $108 for the base price per share. As it was, the IPO ended up at $85/share because of it being a dutch-auction where most investors played it safe and did low bids. As soon as the IPO executed (at $85) it popped anyway to $100. So Google potentially lost out on $23/share (minus 7-8% cut from banks). https://www.quora.com/How-was-Googles-IPO-u…

"Play it safe" doesn't make sense in this context. Dutch auctions' purpose is to incentivize buyers to bid the highest price they're willing to pay.

Except it doesn't do that. In an open auction if someone bids higher you know you won't get any shares unless you raise your bid.

In a Dutch auction if you keep your bid low there's always a chance you will get your shares and at a good price. As actually happened in the Google case. Yes you're risking you might not get any shares, but bidding higher risks unnecessarily pushing the price higher for yourself and everyone else.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#229

Post by Simon_says »

simonh wrote: post #227
Simon_says wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Play it safe" doesn't make sense in this context. Dutch auctions' purpose is to incentivize buyers to bid the highest price they're willing to pay.

Except it doesn't do that. In an open auction if someone bids higher you know you won't get any shares unless you raise your bid. In a Dutch auction if you keep your bid low there's always a chance you will get your shares and at a good price. As actually happened in the Google case. Yes you're risking you might not get any shares, but bidding higher risks unnecessarily pushing the price higher for yourself and every…

Are you sure you know what a Dutch auction is? In your descriptions, you seem to be transposing open and Dutch auctions.

Re: Snap falls to IPO price

#230

Post by qubex »

davidw wrote: post #28
acchow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try to subscribe to the IPO? It was not hard at all. I'm an "average" investory with a standard Charles Schwab trading account and subscribed to it with a few clicks of my mouse. I imagine anyone else could with their brokerage. It was oversubscribed tho, so I got half the quantity I wanted and sold shortly after opening.

> It was oversubscribed tho, so I got half the quantity I wanted and sold shortly after opening. This seems like a pretty good reason to auction the shares in order to maximize the amount of money the company takes in. That they very rarely do has always seemed kind of dirty to me.

If I'm not mistaken the Google (GOOG) IPO was in the form of an auction, organised by their chief economist Hal Varian (wonderful name). Though based on a firm economic foundation and financially sound, the idea itself was (and remains) somewhat controversial.
Post reply on HN