Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
By: Nick Gambino
Reddit announced their plan to go public after a confidential S-1 filing with the SEC. This is, of course, no surprise as it’s been rumored for quite a while with Reddit themselves even stoking those fires.
“The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined,” the company said in a press release confirming the filing. “The initial public offering is expected to occur after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.”
That’s all we know for now as the company is in a quiet period preventing them from speaking more on the matter or offering details for regulatory reasons. The confidential filing is not public so everything being reported outside of the above statement is speculation.
A recent valuation of $10 billion helped Reddit raise $700 million in funding over the summer. At that time, they revealed that they were up to 52 million daily users and made $100 million in ad revenue in only the 2nd quarter of this year. That was an impressive 200% increase over the year prior.
If you’ve been paying attention to the news, it’s not hard to guess what helped push those numbers up. The Game Stop short squeeze earlier this year was instigated and carried out by those on the WallStreetBets subreddit
Reddit became the focal point for the meme stock craze that threatened to overthrow the very method of doing business in the financial markets. With stock prices manipulated by galvanized waves of redditors made up of everyday Joes and Janes, institutions that had long held the power saw it slipping through their perfectly manicured fingers.
It’s that same subreddit where we now have murmurs of pumping the Reddit stock when it finally goes public. Whether they can pull off the same feat we saw with Game Stop remains to be seen. That was essentially a sneak attack and no one plans on getting caught with their pants around their ankles again. Fool me once and all that.
We’ll keep an eye on this as it develops and more information comes out, including a firm date and expected stock price.
