Square, for instance, recently revealed that it will try to go public with a valuation of about $4 billion-a third less than the $6 billion private investors had valued it at as recently as October of a year ago.
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Fidelity Investments has slashed the value of its stake in Snapchat by 25 percent, making the disappearing-photos app the latest and biggest casualty among so-called tech unicorns valued at $1 billion and up.
Fidelity’s most recent quarterly filings from May and August show that the value of its Snapchat shares didn’t change in that time period, but a lower market value in a September 30 document of Fidelity’s growth company fund seems to confirm Morningstar’s data, assuming that Fidelity didn’t sell any of its Snapchat shares during the month of September. Just three months later, shares were written down to just $22.91.
Snapchat has raised more than $1 billion since launching in 2011 and is valued at more than $16 billion, according to CB Insights. It is not clear when Fidelity invested in Snapchat or the size of that investment. That comes after Fidelity marked down the value of its investment in Dropbox by about 15 per cent earlier this year.
Other Snapchat investors include Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firms, as well as tech companies Alibaba, Tencent and Yahoo.
Earlier this week, Snapchat confirmed that its users are viewing more than 6 billion videos a day on its mobile app. That staggering sum – triple what Snapchat claimed in May – is closing in on the 8 billion daily video views reported last week by Facebook. But while it looks like a focus point for the company after its acquisition of Looksery, it’s an increasingly competitive space.
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Neither Fidelity nor Snapchat responded to requests for comment. Business Insider also asked Snapchat for comment.
