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https://scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/2158903/saudi-prince-invests-us250-million-parent-company News & Trends
Saudi prince invests US$250 million in parent company of messaging app Snapchat
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family – who also has stakes in Lyft and Twitter – now owns 2.3 per cent of Snap’s class A shares
Evan Spiegel (left), CEO of Snap, with Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who has taken a 2.3 per cent stake in the parent company of the multimedia messaging app maker, Snapchat. Photo: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, now has some royal backing.
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a businessman and a member of Saudi Arabia's royal family, said on Tuesday that he had acquired 2.3 per cent of the class A shares of the multimedia messaging app maker.
The prince invested about US$250 million, building up his stake over time and completing his investment on May 25.
“Snapchat is one of the most innovative social media platforms in the world and we believe it has only just begun to scratch the surface of its true potential and we are blessed to be part of it,” he said in a statement.
The stake is only the latest technology investment for the prince, who previously bought stakes in Twitter, the online news and social networking messaging service, and Lyft, the on-demand car transportation company.
He met Evan Spiegel and Imran Khan, Snap's CEO and chief strategy officer, respectively, in 2015, the statement said.
The announcement came as Snap announced its second-quarter results.
Despite posting another big loss and reporting that its number of daily active users declined for the first time as a public company, Snap saw its stock jump in after-hours trading because its results beat Wall Street's expectations.
The prince spent about US$11 per share on Snap stock. That is near the low end of the company’s range over the last year. It bottomed out at US$10.50 per share in May.
The investment is one of the first announced by the prince since he was released from Saudi custody in January.
Prince Alwaleed was one of the most prominent among a group of dozens of royal family members and top officials arrested by kingdom authorities last autumn in a crackdown on alleged corruption.
He was released after reaching a financial settlement with the kingdom’s attorney general.
Despite his relatively large stake, Prince Alwaleed will not get any say in how Snap is run.
That is because the company's class A shares get no votes in corporate matters.
Instead, nearly all of the votes are held by Spiegel and his co-founder, Robert Murphy, through their control of its class C shares.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider.