Snowflake's stocks became one of the hottest bets on Wall Street this week, leading the listing to more than double in value during its debut. The company, which received backing from both Salesforce and Berkshire Hathaway, launched its initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday.
The cloud data warehousing company initially priced its IPO at $120 per share on Tuesday Night. This was well above the range of $100 to $110 expected by most analysts. Once trading began on Wednesday, demand for the stock resulted in a massive surge in its value to nearly $245 per share early Wednesday afternoon.
During the day, the stock jumped by more than 150 percent to more than $300 per share. It eventually pulled back and closed at under $254 per share. At its current price, Snowflake now has a market valuation of around $70 billion.
The surge in its stock price has managed to make the relatively young company more valuable than more established firms on the S&P 500 such as the Bank of New York Mellon and Allstate. It also managed to overtake components of the Dow Jones such as Travelers and Walgreens.
Snowflake's IPO was one of the most anticipated "unicorn" listings this year. Other companies that investors are also looking forward to betting on include DoorDash, Palantir, and Airbnb. Apart from Snowflake, another tech firm JFrog also went public on Wednesday. The relatively smaller tech firm also did well during its debut, with its share jumping by close to 50 percent.
Snowflake, which was founded in 2012, mainly offers cloud-related services to major blue-chip companies. According to its recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company claims that it now has more than 3,100 customers worldwide. Among those customers, 146 companies are on the Fortune 500.
Last week, Snowflake disclosed that it had reached an agreement with both Salesforce and Berkshire Hathaway. Both companies had agreed to purchase $250 million worth of Snowflake stock each in separate private placements after it goes public. The commitments made by the two companies partly contributed to the demand for the company's stocks, analysts had pointed out.
