Applovin Corp. shares opened below their initial public offering price in their trading debut Thursday and never recovered, after IPO investors valued the company at more than $28 billion.
Applovin
APP,
-18.50%
shares opened Thursday at $70, well below the IPO price of $80 a share that was in the middle of the range the company proposed a week ago. The stock closed down 18.5% from its IPO price at $65.20, following an intraday high of $71.51 and a low of $63.
The $80 IPO price valued Applovin at $28.6 billion, according to the share count included in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but by the end of the day that valuation was cut to $23.3 billion.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which will be a decade old in July, makes marketing, monetization and analytics software that helps app developers grow their businesses, while also owning a portfolio of more than 200 free-to-play mobile games with in-app purchases.
Read: Applovin IPO: 5 things to know about the software company
In an interview, Applovin Chief Executive and co-founder Adam Foroughi likened Applovin’s model to Netflix Inc.
NFLX,
+1.70%
“When you go to Netflix, you see their content library and they show you based on what you browsed, and viewed before, what you should engage with,” Foroughi told MarketWatch.
“And part of their business is their own original content, which expands their offerings to consumers to get some more data into their system with consumption,” Foroughi said. “We’re built the exact same way within the app ecosystem.”
Over the past 12 months, the Renaissance IPO ETF
IPO,
+1.32%
has gained 130%, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+1.11%
has gained 50%, and the tech heavy Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
+1.31%
has risen 67%.
