Reddit plans to let its users get in on the ground floor of its initial public stock offering
Reddit plans to let its users get in on the ground floor of its initial public stock offering
Nearly 20 years after it first became a thing, the social media site Reddit is planning to go public. Monday morning the company filed details of its initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among them, Reddit says it’s reserving about 8% of the shares it’ll be selling for users and moderators, alongside some board members and friends and family of employees. That’ll give them a chance to buy in before institutional investors, unlike most IPOs.
The first time the University of Florida’s Jay Ritter remembers this kind of thing happening was about 30 years ago. The Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams, went public, “and in their six packs included a coupon saying, ‘If you drink our beer, you can buy our IPO.'”
Ritter says the idea is that investors will be more interested in buying your beer or using your internet platform. It’s also meant to be a kind of reward for loyalty, says Lehigh University finance professor Donald Bowen.
“They’re giving users a chance to get, hopefully some day one price pop, as opposed to buying in the middle of day one after the price has already moved,” said Bowen.
Bowen says Uber reserved shares for drivers and Airbnb did it for hosts.
“So these are all firms that have very important employee-like bases of people that participate in generating their value,” he said.
Bowen says Reddit wants to keep its dedicated users happy because they generate and police the content that draws its audience.
“They’re essential to the value of the firm because Reddit is essentially an advertising firm, they need traffic, and they need the website to meet standards that advertisers require,” he said.
One potential concern here is that some Reddit users are famous for affecting the prices of meme stocks.
“There is the possibility of coordinated mass buying or mass selling that could push the price up or down, temporarily,” said Ritter with the University of Florida.
The company is aware of that possibility. In today’s filing with the SEC, Reddit warned that interest from individual investors could result in increased price volatility.
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