And now the great Snapchat sell-off begins

SNAPCHAT shares crashed nearly 10pc yesterday as its stock-market- selling frenzy continued.

The photo-messaging app, which launched on the stock market in New York on Thursday to great fanfare, has failed to attract any ‘ buy’ ratings from analysts.

shares in the firm that trades under the name snap Inc last night closed at $21.44 a share, taking it closer to its listing price of $17, and well below euphoric highs of $28 a share that greeted its market debut.

The crash wiped out around £7.4bn from the company’s valuation from Friday’s high, and put an end to speculation shares would continue to fly.

There were fears snapchat, which allows users to send images which disappear after being viewed, will not be able to make money out of its young user base. The five-year old business has 158m daily users, but has yet to make a profit and lost £412m last year. It has also been criticised for a controversial decision not to allow new shareholders to have any voting rights.

It has a structure where common shareholders don’t have votes – keeping power in the hands of its 20-something founders and raising eyebrows among Wall street money managers.

This drove a group representing large institutional investors to seek to bar snap Inc from stock index providers such as s&P Dow Jones.

Of six analysts, four have recommended selling the stock, while two have given it a ‘neutral’ rating. Needham analyst laura Martin rated snap ‘underperform’ and compared its stock to buying a lottery ticket.

If snap continues to decline it could fall into the same class as Twitter, which soared more than 70pc on day one when it listed in 2013 but is now down 39pc on its offer price.