Multiple Classes of Stock and the Public Company
In March 2017, Snap Inc. completed its IPO, selling only non-voting Class A common shares to the investing public and beginning an ongoing discussion of the viability and morality of multiple classes of stock in the public company setting. No other company has gone public with non-voting stock on a U.S. exchange. Although Facebook and Alphabet have dual-class stock structures, shareholders still have voting rights, even though insiders hold substantial control with super-voting preferred stock.
Snap’s stock price was $10.79 on May 7, 2018, well below is IPO opening price of $17.00. Certainly the decline has a lot to do with the company’s floundering app, Snapchat, which famously lost $1.3 billion in value when reality star Kylie Jenner tweeted that she no longer used the app, but the negativity associated with the share structure has made it difficult to attract institutional investors, especially those with a history of activism. Although there was a net increase of $8.8 million in
