Gene Munster, Wall Street analyst turned venture capitalist, and Jason Calacanis, Inside.com CEO and founder, were guests on CNBC and offered two sides of the trade ahead of Snap's initial public offering.
Munster: Expensive Valuation
Munster started off with the bear side of the trade and argued Snap's business feels more like Twitter Inc TWTR and less like Facebook Inc FB.
Specifically, the key to Snap's growth, much like Twitter, is improving its average revenue per user (ARPU) as opposed to growing its base. Moreover, the co-founder of Loup Ventures added that Snap's IPO price implies a multiple of 30x next year's revenue which represents a premium to Facebook's 19x multiple.
See Also: Can Snap's Top-Line Follow In Facebook's Footsteps?
However, Munster acknowledged Snap's business profile could be more attractive in five years as it expands more into advanced features with its camera functionality.
Calacanis: Snap's Spiegel Is No Match For Facebook's Zuckerberg
Calacanis, an investor in many startups and dubbed as Tesla's savior for being the first Model S customer, presented the bullish side of the trade.
According to Calacanis, Snap is a "tremendous company" led by CEO Evan Spiegel who created four incredible social media features, including disappearing messages, Stories, Filters, and Spectacles. On the other hand, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg stole three of these ideas.
As such, Snap is led by an "incredibly artistic and fantastic" CEO so the question to investors ahead of Snap's IPO is "do investors want to buy into the company that creates innovative features (Spiegel) or the "thief" who merely copies them (Zuckerberg).
Bottom line, even with all of Facebook's might it still can't kill Snapchat, which implies it's a great company and worth buying.
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