Snap, the parent company of America’s widely-used messaging app Snapchat, has priced its eagerly-awaited public listing at 17 US dollars a share. That puts the value of the social network company at some 24 billion US dollars, the largest listing in the tech sector after China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2014.

The listing also makes the California startup known for its vanishing messages the largest US tech firm listing since Facebook in 2012.

The company's share are set to begin trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. The American company said in its regulatory filing last month that it made 404 million US dollars in revenue in 2016.

The filing says 158 million people use the app daily, and more than 2.5 million Snaps are created every day.

The American company also serves as a platform for media content. It has agreements with outlets such as CNN, the New York Times and Vice. 

The company may already have disappointed its investors even before shares begin trading – Snap is offering its public shares with no voting power, meaning investors will not have any say in the running of the company.

Kurt Schacht is chairman of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee, and managing director of the CFA Institute, which accredits investment professionals. In a Reuters report, Schacht said a further concern is whether that will inspire other privately-held technology companies with valuations of over 1 billion US dollars to follow suit.

Snapchat might be popular in the West, but in the East it could be eclipsed by Asian rivals. The South Korea-based app Snow also lets users send messages that vanish after several seconds, but has more features such as making skin clearer and creating GIFs, making it popular in South Korea and Japan, as well as China. Snow has an advantage in China because Snapchat is not available in China.