Square, the payment technology company founded and led by Twitter (TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey, officially started trading Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker symbol SQ. Shares opened at $11.20, giving the company a $3.6 billion valuation. Initial trades were slightly higher.
On Wednesday night, Square priced its initial public offering at $9 per share, raising $243 million. That implied an market value of around $2.9 billion.
It was a major disappointment for the San Francisco-based company (SQ), which had expected to price its 27 million shares at between $11 and $13 each. Same goes for some of its latter investors that came in at around a $6 billion valuation, although many of them will receive extra stock because of the low price (thus further diluting the company’s own shares).
Square most recently raised $180 million in private funding at $15.46 per share, in a multi-stage Series E round stretching from September 2014 through just last month. Holders of Series E stock will receive extra shares in the IPO, in order to help make up for the underwhelming pricing.
Square becomes just the third tech startup to go public in 2015 after being valued at $1 billion or more by private market investors, following Box and Pure Storage.
Square commemorated the its IPO by setting up a small market outside of the New York Stock Exchange where its local vendors using its credit card swiping and register services sell food, art and more. Cheri Mims, the owner of one of the first businesses to start using Square and Marcia Dorsey, a former coffee shop owner and Dorsey’s mom, rang the New York Stock exchange bell to start trading.
Watch this video for more on Square: