Snap Inc. is the most-shorted tech initial public offering of the year, with a growing number of traders betting the stock will fall.
Investors are skeptical that the company, which owns the Snapchat photo-sharing app, can grow quickly enough to justify its valuation -- now at about $22 billion -- given aggressive competition from Facebook Inc., which has been copying some of Snapchat’s features. That’s helped drive short interest in Snap up to 28 percent of the free float, or shares available to be traded publicly, according to data from Markit Group Ltd. The increase comes before the first lockup expiration on the shares -- on July 30 -- when certain stakeholders and executives will be free to unload their positions for the first time since the March 1 IPO.
