Shares in the owner of Snapchat rocketed 44 per cent on their first day of public trading, underscoring just how keen investors had been to take part in the world’s biggest stock market offering in around three years.

Stocks in Snap started trading on Thursday at $17, or around £13.90, a piece but ended the day at $24.48 on the New York Stock Exchange. According to Reuters, the share price hit an intra-day high of $26.05, temporarily giving Snap a market value of $29.1bn.

The deal was the largest initial public offering since Chinese internet giant Alibaba went public in 2014, and the largest technology listing since Twitter.

The IPO was reportedly 10 times subscribed, meaning that shares could have been priced at as much as $19 from the offset, 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.

Despite the stellar first-day performance though, some analysts expressed concern around the early surge, questioning the sustainability of Snap’s performance in the long run.

“Based on current price its market cap exceeds the likes of BAE Systems, Anglo American, Aviva, Tesco and Standard Chartered and is about the same as RBS. It’s worth more than WPP,” said Neil Wilson, an analyst at ETX Capital.

“It’s got a bigger market cap than a lot of major companies that deliver far higher, sustained profits than Snap has ever managed,” he says, adding also that it is still a loss-making enterprise.

In the lead up to going public, Snap was forced to contend with some criticism 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