American global mass media and telecommunications conglomerate that is the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue, Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA), subsidiary, NBCUniversal, invested $500 million in the brand new IPO Snapchat. NBCUniversal is pushing more into digital media, and over the past year, the company has invested $400 million in Buzzfeed and $200 million in Vox Media.
Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research said investing in Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) is great for NBCU given how popular the company is as a marketing platform for programmers and studios to reach millennials. NBCUniversal has already launched entertainment programs such as The Voice, SNL and E! News’ The Rundown on Snapchat, and said in its memo that it expects to launch more shows on the disappearing-message app in the coming weeks.
According to CNBC, earlier on Friday, they reported that Snap’s stock allocation to NBCUniversal appeared to be the only one made to a new strategic investor, which would make it the lone U.S. media company with a stake. NBCUniversal has agreed to hold Snap’s shares for at least a year. Snap disclosed last month that it expected investors buying up to a quarter of its shares in the IPO to agree not to sell them for a year. Lock-up periods help companies’ moderate stock volatility by preventing company insiders from selling their shares within an allotted time. NBCUniversal courted Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel for the past year, and both companies have been working on deepening their relationship.