Line: An IPO Worth Its $8.6 Billion

Line, the Japan-based instant messaging company that went public on Thursday with a big jump in its share price that put its value at about $8.6 billion, may be the only of its peers that makes sense as a stand-alone company with a ticker symbol and a market cap. Even though mobile messaging is a huge phenomenon, most of the money is still being made by mobile operators that offer outdated text messages. Line has tried every possible gimmick, and though it's unprofitable, it has solid revenue.

The instant-messaging industry started as a "build it, and they will come" engineering lark. The top 10 messaging apps have a combined 4.5 billion active users (some are shared). Yet it's safe to say that not a single one is a moneymaker. Many are part of big corporations (Facebook owns WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, Tencent owns QQ and WeChat, Microsoft owns Skype, the Japanese mobile commerce group Rakuten owns Viber), and the parent companies don't break out their financial results, which is usually a sign that there's not much to brag about. The stand-alone companies, such as SnapChat, don't release financials, either. One of the leaders, Telegram, with about 100 million monthly users, is a nonprofit.