A SNAP-FAT DEBUT

Investors dig for Alibaba gold in NYSE IPO

Vanishing texts are worth more than you think.

Snap, the parent company of the social network Snapchat, priced its initial public offering at $17 a share — above the expected $14 to $16 a share range.

The oversubscribed IPO, which will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday morning, is valued at $24 billion.

The IPO is on pace to be the biggest since Alibaba made its debut on the Big Board in 2014 at a valuation of $231 billion.

Snapchat, which started in 2011, has been one of the fastest-growing social networks ever, with more than 150 million daily active users, according to regulatory filings.

Its ticker symbol will be SNAP.

The company started out with a salacious reputation for enabling sexting teens by making their not-safefor-school pictures disappear shortly after they were received.

During the past year, the company has tried to reinvent itself as a camera company that makes sunglasses that can automatically take pictures.

Demand for shares has been overwhelming, 10 times greater than initially thought.

The offering of 200 million shares raised $3.4 billion for Snap, which lost $887 million the last two years.

It’s likely to be the biggest tech IPO this year, Wall Street watchers say.

“We’re not sure there will be any other whoppers this year,” Everett Wallace of Triton Research said.

While investors have clamored for Snap’s shares, the IPO process hasn’t gone so smoothly.

An investor committee that advises the Securities and Exchange Commission will review Snap’s governance practices next week, because the shares give investors no voting rights or say on compensation, according to a report late Wednesday from Reuters.

Investors have also been concerned about Snap’s admission that it may never make a profit.

WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell said in Barcelona on Wednesday that his company spent $90 million to advertise on the app last year — almost a quarter of Snap’s revenue.

“The fact that they’re trying to sell themselves as a camera company is laughable,” one investor, who hasn’t been allotted IPO shares, told The Post.

Snap’s marketing of itself as not only a social net- work, but a company that makes wearable technology, cameras and glasses pits it against some moreestablished companies, Wallace said.

“You could buy Twitter and Fitbit and GoPro and Warby Parker and still have $6 billion left over to buy the USS George Herbert Walker Bush, a nuclear aircraft carrier,” Wallace said.