Snapchat parent files for long-awaited IPO

Snap Inc, the parent company of hugely popular picture messaging app Snapchat, has filed for an initial public offering, after months of speculation about a flotation.

The photo app, which has become one of the most widely-used social networks for teenagers and millennials, was started by 26-year-old Stanford University dropout Evan Spiegel and is expected to fetch around $4bn for its IPO.

The company is valued at between $20bn and $25bn, having massively increased its advertising revenue in recent months.

Snap hopes to move beyond its social network in order to expand towards everything camera-related, after entering the stock market with the SNAP ticker.

"In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones," the company wrote in the filing.

"This means that we are willing to take risks in an attempt to create innovative and different camera products that are better able to reflect and improve our life experiences."

In a relatively quiet IPO market of late, Snap had long been touted as the next big tech offering to go public in the US, and is expected to be the largest since Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba made its debut in 2014.

The company has already taken measures to diversify its business beyond the picture messaging app, introducing hardware for the first time last year through its Spectacles, but it admitted that the flamboyant sunglasses have yet to generate "significant revenue".

Facebook reportedly offered $3bn to buy Snapchat in 2014, but Spiegel and the company rejected the offer.