Snowflake Pops Over 100% in Wall Street Debut

Cloud-based data management company Snowflake made its debut in the market this week, soaring 112% on Wednesday.

“The heart’s beating a little faster right now,” said Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital on CNBC when he watched the market open that day.

The California company’s first trade was 104.2% above its initial public offering price. The IPO was the largest software IPO of 2020 so far.

Snowflake, which is backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. , raised $3.36 billion in the IPO and was valued at roughly $33 billion. The first trade was at $245 at 12:38 p.m. Eastern for 3.5 million shares. This was compared with the $120 IPO price.

Speaking to Forbes on the afternoon of the IPO, Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman insisted that th company’s IPO process had gone as planned. The company had prepared for a year, meeting with institutional investors and going through public scrutiny for months.

“This is a very heavily vetted company,” Slootman told Forbes on the day of the stock’s debut. “The only problem today was that nobody wanted to be a seller because the conviction was so high.”

According to Business Insider, Slootman’s stake in the company is now worth $3.9 billion.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway also saw its stake in Snowflake surge by more than $800 million on Wednesday. Berkshire held roughly $730 million worth of shares heading into Snowflake’s IPO. After the stock closed a whopping 111% higher, that stake was worth about $1.55 billion.

On Thursday shares of the company were down 10.39% . The company’s market cap dropped to $63.1 billion at Thursday’s market close.

“A stock is worth exactly what somebody wants to pay for it,” Slootman told CNBC. “It’s like talking about the weather — it is what it is. Tomorrow’s another day, we’ll see what it brings.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Snowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW) and have not been compensated for this article.