The owner of Snapchat priced its initial public offering above expectations on Wednesday, raising $3.4bn (£2.8bn) on Wall Street thanks to strong demand from investors for one of the highest-profile stock market debuts in years.

The pricing level puts a price tag of $17 on each share and means that the whole company has a market value of around $24bn, or £19bn.

That’s well ahead of its social media rival Twitter and above the slated $19.5bn (£15.8bn) to $22.3bn (£18.1bn) range that the company had been targeting.

According to Reuters, investors had piled into the order book hoping to snap up stocks in the company.

The deal was reportedly 10 times subscribed, meaning that shares could have been priced at as much as $19 (£15.50).

But, citing a source, Reuters reported that the company had wanted to attract longer-term investors, like mutual funds, rather than hedge funds who might sell the shares quickly for a fast profit.

Snap is the first US social-media company to go public since Twitter did so more than three years ago and the largest IPO since Alibaba in 2014 but while the company has enjoyed strong revenue growth in recent years – revenue climbed sixfold last year to $404.5m – it was forced to contend with some criticism in the lead up to the pricing over the pace of user growth.

The number of people using the app slowed in the second half of 2016, according to Bloomberg.

The world’s most valuable brands Show all 10 1 /10 The world’s most valuable brands The world’s most valuable brands 1st - Google Google replaced Apple as the world’s most valuable brand, with a brand value of $109.5bn, according to Brand Finance The world’s most valuable brands 2nd - Apple Apple’s brand value declined from $145.9bn to $107.1bn in 2016 The world’s most valuable brands 3rd - Amazon Amazon's brand value rose from $69.6bn to $106.4bn in 2016 Amazon The world’s most valuable brands 4th - At&t Of the 40 telecoms brands in the ranking, AT&T in 2016 overtook Verizon as the most valuable brand rising to $87bn from $59.9bn the year before The world’s most valuable brands 5th - Microsoft Microsoft's brand value rose marginally from $67.3bn to $76.3bn in 2016 The world’s most valuable brands 6th - Samsung Amazon's brand value rose from $58.6bn to $66.2bn The world’s most valuable brands 7th - Verizon Verizon's brand value inched up from $63.1bn to $65.9bn The world’s most valuable brands 8th - Walmart Walmart's brand value rose from $53.6bn to $62.5bn The world’s most valuable brands 9th - Facebook Facebook's brand value increased sharply from $34bn to just shy of $62bn The world’s most valuable brands 10th - ICBC ICBC saw its brand value rise to $47.8bn from $36.3bn. It was the most valuabe financial brand in the world in 2016 replacing Wells Fargo