Technology is advancing as far as ever, and mobile apps seem to rule the world. It’s difficult to argue their impact when you consider the following IPOs from the last few years that have rocked the world—and not always for the better.
Candy Crush
The candy-swapping game has become nearly ubiquitous and has become a leader in a game genre that has always been popular. So when the game’s developer, King Digital Entertainment, released its IPO in March 2014, it was valued at around $500 million. However, Candy Crush is an example of IPOs not always going as planned. Although the company first released shares at $22.50, stock’s value fell to $19 shortly after.
Even successful offerings can fail to make a big splash. Consider Twitter, which first released its IPO listing in November 2013. The company offered stocks at $26 per share, and when the NYSE opened the next morning, share value jumped to $45.10. Twitter stock continued to rise slightly but ultimately closed at $44.90. Because the stock was lower than its opening offer price, investors narrowly missed becoming billionaires.
Rival social network Facebook earned the honor of being the largest IPO in the history of the Internet over a year before Twitter went public after achieving peak marketing capitalization of over $104 billion despite technical glitches leading up to the IPO. Facebook has a secret weapon in its arsenal, however: as a company, it had recently acquired Instagram. Over the first year, Facebook shares would drop beneath the IPO prices of $38 per share; however, shares rebounded and continued growing after that.
Snapchat
More recently, the photo-sharing messaging app Snapchat went public and earned $3.4 billion after rising 44% on the first trading day despite warnings from Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel that the product was not designed to make a profit. However, Snapchat would reveal a staggering $2.2 billion loss for during the first quarter of 2017 just a few months later. Stock prices plummeted, and Snapchat’s position still remains precarious. In fact, after one negative tweet from influencer Kylie Jenner after an update, Snapchat lost a whopping $1.3 billion in stock value.