March 3rd, 2017 10:10 AM by Eric Fang
Snap ? commonly known as Snapchat ? went public this week. As the weekend approached its market capitalization (shares multiplied by stock price) was $32.9 billion. In case you?re keeping tabs (and we are), a day earlier, on Thursday, its market cap was $28.3 billion, the same (combined) market cap of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as calculated by the value of their common shares?
For those of you who don?t have teenagers, you might be surprised to learn that Snap is an ?app? company that exists so users can share silly photos and videos of themselves ? and then those images instantly disappear. What?s so interesting about Snap is that in its IPO documents the company warns that it may never make a profit. That?s correct: a social media company that may never make a nickel is now worth more than Fannie and Freddie, which ended 2016 with a combined profit of $20.2 billion?