Hollis Johnson
NEW YORK - Cheers erupted from the floor of The New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as cofounders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy rang the opening bell to announce Snap's hotly-anticipated IPO.
The Snapchat maker's debut is the first tech IPO of the year and the largest tech deal since Alibaba went public in 2014. Snap had priced its IPO at $17 per share, but pent-up demand surged the opening price to $24 at a $33 billion valuation.
On the floor of the exchange, Snap executives and early employees clapped, took selfies, and hugged each other. Back at the company's Los Angeles headquarters, employees celebrated the IPO with doughnuts and champagne.
"Right now, we're just celebrating," Snap's chief financial officer, Drew Vollero, told BI after the stock began trading on Thursday. When the bell rang to mark the end of Snap's first day as a publicly listed company, the stock was at $24.51, up 44%.
Here's what it was like inside Snap's blockbuster IPO:
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