Square (SQ) Sets IPO Price At $9, Drops Another $1 Billion In Valuation, Report Says

SAN FRANCISCO -- Square, the payments-process company, set the price for its initial public offering at $9, below the original price range it gave Wall Street earlier this week, according to a report Wednesday night. Square will begin trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "SQ."

At that price, Square raised $243 million at a valuation of $2.9 billion. For most companies, that would be a success, but that figure falls quite short of the $6 billion the company was valued at last year during its final round of private funding. The $9 price was reported by Reuters, which cited "people familiar with the matter."

Earlier this month, the company told potential investors it intended to price its IPO between $11 and $13, but the company failed to attract enough interest to warrant those prices. At that target range, Square would've been valued at about $4 billion, more than $1 billion more than its current valuation.

Square in October revealed that it has seen steady growth in revenue, increasing 54 percent from $552 million in 2013 to $850 million in 2014, but it has also seen its net losses grow 47 percent year-to-year, up from $104 million in 2013 to $154 million last year. The company's bigger issue, however, is that it has failed to truly define what type of business it is, whether it is payments-processing company, a software tool for small businesses or something else entirely.