Reddit Launches Long-Awaited IPO With $748M Target

Reddit disclosed further details of what is set to be one of the year’s biggest IPOs, with the company and some existing shareholders seeking to raise as much as $748 million. Rainmaker Securities co-founder and Managing Director Greg Martin joins Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

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Ken Anderson
Reddit aims to 'sell an AI story' for IPO debut: Strategist

In Reddit's S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the social media platform revealed plans to raise $748 million and seeks an estimated valuation of $6.4 billion for its highly anticipated IPO debut. Rainmaker Securities Managing Director Greg Martin joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss Reddit's recent moves to avoid becoming just another meme stock…Watch Video

Ken Anderson
Does Reddit want to be a meme stock?

As Reddit prepares to go public, its executives have concocted a plan to stay in their most important stakeholders’ good graces.

In early 2021, stocks began behaving strangely. Retail investors, coordinating on internet platforms, decided to band together and coordinate their stock trades—chiefly, they plotted on Reddit.

On the subreddit WallStreetBets, as well as on its sister channel on the messaging app Discord, investors organized a historic short squeeze of GameStop in early 2021, an effort that bounced the video game retailer’s stock price up 1,700 percent in a matter of weeks and eventually caused the closure of a once-successful hedge fund Melvin Capital…Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
Reddit trying to push AI story as hard as it can ahead of IPO: expert

Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss expectations for Reddit IPO. Martin says investors could be looking at a valuation within US$4-6B range for Reddit. He adds this is a media company, with advertising being its largest source of revenue. He adds the company is trying to differentiate itself from Pinterest and SNAP, which could be a challenge given their model is similar.

Ken Anderson
Reddit Is Moving Ahead With IPO After Two Years on Sidelines

Reddit Inc. filed for an initial public offering, revealing the social media platform’s shrinking losses and helping to propel a still-tenuous resurgence in US listings.

The San Francisco-based company, in what is set to be one of the biggest listings of the year, filed Thursday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to move ahead with an IPO, more than two years after first submitting its plan confidentially.

Reddit won’t disclose proposed terms for the IPO, including its valuation in a listing, until a later filing. The company has been advised to consider a valuation of at least $5 billion in an IPO and could begin marketing the shares as soon as March, Bloomberg News has reported.

Reddit, founded in 2005, averaged 73.1 million daily active unique visitors in the fourth quarter, according to the filing. It became an icon of the so-called meme-stock era after a forum on the site, WallStreetBets, jolted the stock market.

The company reported a net loss of $90.8 million on revenue of $804 million in 2023, compared with a net loss of $158.6 million on revenue of $666.7 million a year earlier…Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
Reddit tests the IPO market during a treacherous time for unprofitable startups: ‘Sophisticated investors won’t be excited about buying’

Social media company Reddit has been toying with the idea of going public for half a decade. Now it’s finally going through with those plans—and the timing is risky.

The IPO market has effectively been at a standstill for the last two years, after public investors began to shy away from unprofitable businesses, and shares of public companies fell to earth after the pandemic-induced tech boom in 2020 and 2021.
 
Some companies that have tested the waters in the last few months have struggled to maintain traction. Instacart, for example, closed at less than $30 per share on Thursday, down 11% from its public debut in September.
 
Now Reddit is delving into the noise—and it could face even more trouble than some of its peers before it because of one key line item in its financials: It’s not profitable. Reddit, which revealed a net loss of $90.8 million in its IPO filing on Thursday, is more akin to the swaths of high-growth, money-losing companies that went public two years ago. It has cumulatively lost more than $716 million since 2014, and has yet to post a net profit, filings show. Revenue at Reddit is climbing—up to $804 million in 2023 from $666.7 million the year prior. But losses are a tough sell for public investors these days.
 
“They’re losing a good amount of money,” says Greg Martin, managing director of Rainmaker Securities, a secondaries brokerage where investors can buy shares of private companies before they go public. “Sophisticated investors won’t be excited about buying,” he wrote in an email…Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
Stocks Climb to New Highs Even as Big-Tech Trade Splinters

An Alphabet Inc. earnings flop in the grip of an historically narrow stock rally with echoes of the dot-com bubble. Jerome Powell downplaying hopes of early interest-rate cuts. A fresh regional bank rout.

Yet for the Wall Street drama this week, the bull market powered on thanks to soothing economic data and strong reports from Meta Platforms and Amazon.com. The twist: The easy buy-and-hold trade on the Magnificent Seven is now on shakier ground.

It was an anxious stretch for bulls by any measure. The 13th gain in 14 weeks for the Nasdaq 100 masked wildly divergent reactions in stocks whose soaring valuations are threatening what has long been a monolithic trade in tech heavyweights. Among the five tech giants that announced quarterly results this week, two of them saw their stocks go up post earnings while three were down, breaking the almost lockstep rally that’s been fueled by optimism over artificial intelligence since early 2023.….Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
IPO Market Heating Up for Tech

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Rainmaker Securities Managing Director and Co-Founder Greg Martin joins Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde to discuss the current IPO landscape and the road ahead for Reddit. He speaks on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Ken Anderson
Investors suggest Reddit aim for multi-billion dollar valuation ahead of IPO: report

Reddit has been advised to target a valuation of at least $5 billion in a potential initial public offering (IPO) this spring, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The social media network – which hosts forums for users to share, discuss and vote on content – has been holding meetings with potential IPO investors and advisers have suggested the company should target roughly $5 billion as its valuation, per Bloomberg’s report citing people familiar with the discussions.

Bloomberg noted that private trades of Reddit’s unlisted shares have been traded at a valuation below $5 billion – with would-be buyers on Rainmaker Securities’ platform submitting bids with a value in the $4.5 billion to $4.8 billion range and Forge Global Holdings’ database indicating a $4.8 billion valuation…Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
Reddit Advised to Target at Least $5 Billion Value in IPO

Reddit Inc. is weighing feedback from early meetings with potential investors in its initial public offering that it should consider a valuation of at least $5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, even as it is estimated below that figure in the volatile market for shares of private companies.

The San Francisco-based social media company and its advisers are targeting a valuation in the mid-single-digit billions, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. The ultimate figure will depend on the IPO market’s nascent recovery, the people said. Reddit is considering a possible listing as soon as March, the people said.

Separately, private trades of Reddit’s unlisted shares have valued the company below $5 billion. Potential buyers on Rainmaker Securities’ platform have submitted bids indicating a value of between $4.5 billion and $4.8 billion…Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
People will be running out of choice’: One VC is launching a new $100m fund to take advantage of secondaries in growth companies

The current venture market is fraught: investors have funnelled billions of euros into startups in recent years, but amid a drought of exits, VCs aren’t cashing out on their investments — and neither are their own investors.

It’s a conundrum that more firms are dealing with now, and one solution VCs have at their disposal is secondaries — where investors, founders and employees sell equity in private companies. Today London-based investment firm Launchbay Capital is announcing that it’s raised $25m, of a target $100m fund, to try and take advantage of what many in the VC industry think could become a booming secondaries market in 2024…Read Full Article

Ken Anderson
Role Of A.I. Hype In The 2024 IPO Outlook

We’ve seen the bottom of private market valuations, notes Glen Anderson. He discusses the 2024 IPO outlook. He talks about how 2H23 saw a substantial increase in demand for everything we trade. He mentions that investors are starting to put risk on again and the private market appetite generally indicates the appetite for IPOs will be strong. He looks at companies that could be a catalyst for the 2024 IPO market. He then goes over the role of A.I. hype in the 2024 IPO outlook. Tune in to find out more about the stock market today.

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Ken Anderson
PO market set for rebound in 2024: Analyst

Despite a dismal 2023 for IPOs, Rainmaker Securities Managing Director Greg Martin sees a potential ""greenlight situation"" for a rebound in 2024. He notes positive drivers like a dovish Federal Reserve, falling yields, and economic stabilization are making conditions ""quite good"" for public debuts.

While risks like geopolitics remain, Martin expects ""a major 2024 if these conditions hold up."" He notes poor post-IPO performance for 2023 deterred further issuance, but a strong showing by some anticipated offerings could kickstart a ""jetstream"" next year.

In Martin's view, companies demonstrating ""stable, but profitable growth"" will attract investors focused on profitability rather than growth alone.

Ken Anderson
SoftBank-backed metaverse firm Improbable sells a key gaming venture for $97 million
  • Improbable has sold The Multiplayer Group, a multiplayer games services company it bought in 2019, to Keywords Studios for £76.5 million ($97.1 million).

  • Herman Narula, Improbable’s CEO, told CNBC the transaction is part of its “venture builder” strategy, through which it invests in or acquires teams with the option to expand them or spin them out.

  • The deal to sell MPG, one of Improbable’s many notable bets on gaming, arrives after a series of struggles at the firm.

  • Narula said he expects to see a “tale of two metaverses” emerge in 2024, where centralized experiences such as Roblox and Fortnite are eschewed in favor of decentralized, “Web3″ versions.

Metaverse company Improbable has sold one of its key gaming ventures to London-listed video game developer Keywords Studios for £76.5 million ($97.1 million).

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Ken Anderson
Will potential Shein or Skims IPOs pan out in 2024?

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Several private companies are thinking about going public in 2024, including Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein and Kim Kardashian's SKIMS shapewear brand. Although investors had high hopes for offerings in 2023, the IPO market fell short of expectations.

Rainmaker Securities Managing Director Greg Martin and EquityZen Head of Business Development & Partnerships Brianne Lynch sit down with Yahoo Finance Live to discuss sentiment on the IPO market heading into 2024 after this year's performance.

Ken Anderson
OpenAI investor sentiment 'has changed,' investors 'shouldn't fall in love,' analyst says

OpenAI has been through a rollercoaster ride, first ousting CEO Sam Altman, who then agreed to join Microsoft (MSFT), only for the AI startup to announce that Altman was going to rejoin the company with most of its board having been replaced. OpenAI is set to go through with a share sale that values the company at about $86 billion. But how are investors feeling about the company?
RainMaker Group Holdings Managing Partner Glen Anderson tells Yahoo Finance Live that "the 'buy OpenAI at any price' bid is gone. Sentiment has changed. Investors have a more cautious and pragmatic approach to the stock now."
Anderson says "OpenAI might be the first company to come up with a genuinely useful generative AI product but tech is littered with cases of first movers that lose in the long-run...there are other options to play AI in the market... We've seen sizable investor interest, for example, in Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks and others. The point is there is multiple ways to play AI, with Sam coming back, OpenAI may resurge but investors shouldn't fall in love with one stock." Watch Video

Ken Anderson
Despite OpenAI drama, IPO expectations remain: expert

Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the probability of OpenAI having an IPO on the horizon. Martin says there are some regulatory challenges ahead. However, he expects an IPO on its future. He also discusses Canadian startup Cohere and its likelihood of going public. Watch Video

Ken Anderson
Altman's ouster from OpenAI spooks secondary investors

Investor interest in OpenAI shares on the secondary market has gone from a feeding frenzy to a near standstill as prospective buyers wait for news following the surprise termination of CEO Sam Altman.

Buyer interest in OpenAI stock totaling around $100 million all but evaporated between Thursday and Monday, according to Javier Avalos, CEO of secondary trading platform Caplight.

"Buyers are running for the hills," said Glen Anderson, president of Rainmaker, a bank that trades pre-IPO shares. Anderson added, however, that the dip in investor interest may be temporary, as secondary investors await future developments… Read Full Article

Ken Anderson