Business Reddit files to list IPO on NYSE under the ticker RDDT - Reddit are trying to sell stocks to jannies too while spez made 200 million last year lmfao

• Reddit on Thursday filed to go public.
• Its market debut will mark the first major tech initial public offering of the year and the first social media IPO since Pinterest went public in 2019.
• The social media company, founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, has raised about $1.3 billion in funding and has a post valuation of $10 billion, according to deal-tracking service PitchBook.

Social media company Reddit filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday after a yearslong run-up. The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RDDT.”

Its market debut, expected in March, will be the first major tech initial public offering of the year. It’s the first social media IPO since Pinterest went public in 2019.

Reddit said it had $804 million in annual sales for 2023, up 20% from the $666.7 million it brought in the previous year, according to the filing. The social networking company’s core business is reliant on online advertising sales stemming from its website and mobile app.

The company, founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, said it has incurred net losses since its inception. It reported a net loss of $90.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2023, compared with a net loss of $158.6 million the year prior.

Reddit is one of the most-visited websites in the U.S., according to analytics firm Semrush, but it has struggled to build an online advertising business comparable to those of tech giants such as Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet.

Reddit has more than 100,000 communities, 73 million average daily active uniques, or DAUq, and 267 million average weekly active uniques, according to the filing. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, Reddit’s U.S. average revenue per user, or ARPU, was $5.51, down from $5.92 from the previous year. The company’s global ARPU was $3.42, which was a 2% year-over-year decline from $3.49.

Reddit said that by 2027 it estimates the “total addressable market globally from advertising, excluding China and Russia, to be $1.4 trillion.” Reddit said the current addressable advertising market is $1.0 trillion, sans China and Russia.

The company is building on its search capabilities and plans to “more fully address the $750 billion opportunity in search advertising that S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates the market to be in 2027.”

Reddit said it plans to use artificial intelligence to improve its ad business and that it expects to open new revenue channels by offering tools and incentives to “drive continued creation, improvements, and commerce.“

It’s also in the early stages of developing and monetizing a data-licensing business in which third parties would be allowed to access and search data on its platform.

For example, Google on Thursday announced an expanded partnership with Reddit that will give the search giant access to the company’s data to, among other uses, train its AI models.

In June, several prominent Reddit moderators locked subreddits as part of a blackout to protest the company’s decision to increase the price some third-party developers pay to use its application programming interface, or API, depending on their usage. At the time, Reddit said the pricing change was necessary because many big tech companies were using data to train large language models.

“In January 2024, we entered into certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years,” Reddit said, regarding its data-licensing business. “We expect a minimum of $66.4 million of revenue to be recognized during the year ending December 31, 2024 and the remaining thereafter.”

Reddit appears to be investigating a business strategy akin to that of Roblox, which derives the bulk of its revenue from digital sales on its social gaming platform, and online retailer eBay. The company wants to introduce more features to create a user economy that could include games, according to the filing. Reddit said there are currently informal exchanges of physical and digital goods and services that may create another line of revenue.

Reddit will offer three classes of stock with different voting shares. Class A stock will come with one vote per share. Class B shares will come with 10 votes per share and can be converted at any time into one share of Class A stock. Class C shares have no voting rights.

Reddit said that its non-employed moderators, known as Redditors, can participate in the company’s IPO offering through its “directed share program.” Because of this, Reddit said there’s a possibility of “individual investors, retail or otherwise constituting a larger proportion of the investors participating in this offering than is typical for an initial public offering.” Reddit said it had an average of more than 60,000 daily active moderators in December 2023.

“These factors could cause volatility in the market price of our Class A common stock,” the company warned.

Regarding risks, Reddit said its daily active unique figures “may fluctuate or decrease in one or more markets from time to time due to various factors.”

“For example, although we saw increased growth in our user base during the COVID-19 pandemic, we experienced lower levels of DAUq growth and declining DAUq as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided,” the filing said. “DAUq has also declined in the past in periods following usage peaks surrounding certain worldwide events, such as the onset of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the three months ended March 31, 2022, and cultural trends, including video game releases, such as Elden Ring in the three months ended March 31, 2022, and traffic related to r/wallstreetbets in the three months ended March 31, 2021.”

Reddit first filed a confidential draft of its public offering prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2021. The company has an employee headcount of 2,013 as of December 31, 2023, which was up from 1,942 during the previous year.

Reddit has raised about $1.3 billion in funding and has a post valuation of $10 billion, according to deal-tracking service PitchBook. Publishing giant Condé Nast bought Reddit in 2006. Reddit spun out of Conde Nast’s parent company, Advance Magazine Publishers, in 2011.

Advance now owns 34% of voting power. Other notable shareholders include Tencent and Sam Altman, CEO of startup OpenAI.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/22/reddit-files-to-list-ipo-on-nyse-under-the-ticker-rddt.html (Archive)

Message some jannies received trying to sell stocks to them:

Hello,

TL;DR: – you're invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. Details about eligibility and next steps follow. This (long, dense) message has all the info we can provide due to legal restrictions.

As you may have heard, Reddit has taken steps toward becoming a publicly traded company with the initial public filing of our registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2024. Yes, it's happening.

And because you have helped make Reddit what it is today, you now have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors.

We're offering a Directed Share Program (“DSP”) that invites eligible users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to participate in our initial public offering (“IPO”). (Including you!)

Program Requirements​

While being selected to pre-register is the first step, there are certain legal and regulatory requirements to participate in the DSP that are outside of Reddit's control. Bear with us here…

To be eligible for the DSP, you must:

• Be a current U.S. resident;

• You will be asked to provide the DSP Administrator a valid social security or permanent resident number, along with other personal information. Reddit will not have access to this data.

• Please note that U.S. residents using a VPN may face application limitations if the VPN locates them in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions.

• Be at least 18 years old;

• Provide your full legal name and an email address;

• Not be a current or former Reddit employee (FTE).

When the DSP launches (a few weeks after pre-registration ends), individuals who have been confirmed for the program will be contacted by our external DSP Administrator. You will then be asked to provide additional information securely to the DSP Administrator to confirm your eligibility.

How to pre-register​

The number of people who can participate in the DSP is limited; we will offer this opportunity to as many redditors as we are able to accommodate. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. Based on demand, we may also limit the number of shares available.

If you are interested in being part of Reddit's DSP, please go to https://reddit.com/dsp on desktop to complete the pre-registration form. If you are one of the confirmed participants, we will follow up with an email with more details in the coming weeks. You can also refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for more information. Due to regulatory restrictions (yeah… we know…), we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions.

Pre-registering does not guarantee that you will be invited or able to participate in the DSP; it also does not obligate you to purchase shares.

As with any investment opportunity, you should make an individual decision based on your own personal circumstances and risk tolerance. Therefore, we urge you to review the preliminary prospectus, when available, before deciding whether to invest in Reddit.

The deadline for pre-registering for the DSP is March 5, 2024. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist.

What happens next?​

While there won't be a confirmation email immediately after you pre-register, everyone who pre-registers will receive an email in the coming weeks from “noreply@redditmail.com” telling them whether they can proceed with the next steps for the DSP.

This is an automated message (beep, boop, beep) and does not receive replies. Please refer to the FAQ for more information. Per our lawyercats, we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions.

Prospectus and Important Disclosures

*The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, a copy of the preliminary prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from:

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, New York, New York 10014, or email: prospectus@morganstanley.com; Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316, or email: prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Attention/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, telephone: 1-866-803-9204, or email: prospectus-eq_fi@jpmorgan.com; and BofA Securities, Inc., NC1-022-02-25, 201 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina 28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department, telephone: 1-800-294-1322, or email: dg.prospectus_requests@bofa.com.*

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This notification shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time prior to the notice of its acceptance given after the effective date. An indication of interest in response to this notification will involve no obligation or commitment of any kind.

Spez made almost 200 million last year too:



And it's important for the jannies to do it for free:



SEC filing attached and can be found here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024006294/reddits-1q423.htm (Archive)

 

[Absolutego]

This is going to be such a shitshow, I can't wait.
The literal only thing that can get admins to change something about their site is the threat of bad press, and just imagine the fun daytime TV stock hawkers are going to have digging into reddit's worst moments while explaining how a tech stock dropped 50% in value in its first month post-IPO.

 

[Jacknife]

As much as I hate Reddit I do not understand why you are all so convinced that this will fail.

1. 90 million loss is really not that much for a tech company that size, especially when you can just pay your CEO less to go positive
2. Reddits mods and user will not leave, they always say they will but never do
3. Normies can use Reddit without being annoyed by troon shit, I use Reddit for a video game sub and sometimes for tech advice
4. Reddit has a large amount of old threads that are still getting hit by Google searches giving them exposure and valuable advertisement space

As for shorting it, I would not. And also I would not buy it, there maybe was a time were IPOs could be a money grab but that is over and I am not sure wether it ever was that way or wether we only remember the successes like Amazon and Facebook.

I would not touch this, looks like something we're retail investors can get burned badly

 

[Absolutego]

As much as I hate Reddit I do not understand why you are all so convinced that this will fail.

1. 90 million loss is really not that much for a tech company that size, especially when you can just pay your CEO less to go positive
2. Reddits mods and user will not leave, they always say they will but never do
3. Normies can use Reddit without being annoyed by troon shit, I use Reddit for a video game sub and sometimes for tech advice
4. Reddit has a large amount of old threads that are still getting hit by Google searches giving them exposure and valuable advertisement space

As for shorting it, I would not. And also I would not buy it, there maybe was a time were IPOs could be a money grab but that is over and I am not sure wether it ever was that way or wether we only remember the successes like Amazon and Facebook.

I would not touch this, looks like something we're retail investors can get burned badly

They're literally the least valuable user base of all the major socials (even Xitter can ask for more per user from advertisers than reddit can), half of the website refuses to use the new, more easily monetized UI, and, most importantly, reddit has literally never made a profit. Even during their biggest growth during Obama's first term, they were reliant on VC funding, and later relied on being handed off between increasingly desperate media conglomerates as a subsidiary "with potential" until their current owner finally put their foot down and said "IPO or we dump you".

In their letter to the SEC declaring their intention to IPO the company admitted that, somehow, despite making $800 million in 2023, they had a net operating income of around -$90 million. I'm genuinely curious how a website that pretty much lives and dies with AWS's availability can churn through that much money in a year, even taking the cost of San Francisco real estate into account.

 

[East_Clintwood]

90 million loss is really not that much for a tech company that size

Maybe not a few years ago when interest rates were low and venture capital funding was everywhere, but in the current climate, with no realistic prospect of ever turning that loss into a profit (if it hasn't managed it by now, it never will)

especially when you can just pay your CEO less to go positive

Lolno. The vast, vast majority of Spez's reported pay (something like 191 of the 193 mil reported) was one off stocks and options awards

Reddits mods and user will not leave, they always say they will but never do

Whether or not the userbase will leave or not is largely irrelevant when you can't monetize them anyway.

Reddit has a large amount of old threads that are still getting hit by Google searches giving them exposure and valuable advertisement space

I mean that's always been the case and they've still never made a profit.

 

[PointOfNoReturnPoint]

Everyone on reddit hates capitalism right? Or now that it's staring you in the face you have no choice to comply. Let's see how your protest will work again. On a side note it would be amazing to see the people who buy push it instantly to the opposite of the super woke bullshit going on.

 

[Slav Power]

My biggest worry here is the nuking of all the subs that were incredibly informative, such as r/Piracy, r/Datahoarder, r/Opendirectories, r/Roms, r/GenP, r/CrackWatch and so on. Archive Team will surely have all of that backed up on everything from hard drives to LTO tapes and M-Discs, but that'll be a static copy you'd need on hand to access, and it wouldn't get updated since the communities are dead. And where will they move? Who the fuck knows, and who knows if the "new" ones won't be impostors that'll abuse the reputation of the old communities to peddle malware links in the megathreads. I know r/Piracy had a backup plan ready years ago, but the same cannot be said about other subreddits.

There's also the issue that a shitton of answers to technical issues are on Reddit, the rest is either shitty pre-written articles or those bot generated sites that tell you fuck all and only poison search results. As much as people hate on Reddit for troons and all the psychos, they don't realize how valuable of a resource it still is. No, not all subs are r/transirl and a lot of them are still full of people that just want to talk about a thing and keep up the quality of the conversation. But when Reddit starts axing those communities for telling people how to violate copyright law, and then potentially completely go under, that'll be a fucking travesty.

 

[LiquidKid]

I do agree here but

I think Reddit isn't even that useful as a propaganda tool anymore just because of how much the user base has been curated by the top 12 power mods. Reddit is Left, really, really Left so it's pretty much the converted preaching to the already converted. Normies don't really use Reddit that much, maybe as a bathroom read while they're taking a shit because it's not aimed at them. Looks at r/all and tell me Jon Q Public would last 5 minutes in that cesspool. r/all is the reason /popular was created as an end run around the power mods who manipulate the algorithm. You really believe /witchesvspatriarchy is something the average dude/lass wants to see on his/her front page? But's it's always on the front page, always.

Give the average Yankee a little credit (not much mind you but some)

Reddit is aimed at Reddit users, that's it's biggest issue and always been it's biggest issue. It's a big circle jerk that's filled up some much with Proggy Spunk that only true believers can really last long enough to be affected by the propaganda. But the catch is of course that these are the people who you don't need to propagandize as they are already 100% True Believers.

Reddi't growth has been stagnant for so long because of this. The power mods don't give a shit if Reddit grows or makes money. That's not their concern at all, the troon power mods are 100% OK with Reddit being small but if Reddit actually wants to make money that user base has to get bigger and not be made up of NEAT Troon's and their ass patters. Advertisers want click thru's from people that have money to spend and that sure as hell ain't the users of r/all.

whoo, bit of a rant there but...yah

Reddits site layout is already confusing to a lot of normies. All this time and they never bothered to make a useable UI.

Hit my favorite aspect of over moderation is that r/unpopular opinions has a ban list so large that it basically bans you for posting almost any actual opinion that does get posted only has replies saying “this isn’t unpopular.”

 

[S.C.U.D.]

Day 1 of the IPO, Reddit stock will be worth less on closing than opening. Such is the fate of all tech IPOs. It's just one last pump and dump to make the executives money when they can no longer secure investment capital. You have a better chance to make money buying fucking Bitconnect in 2024 than Reddit stock.

 

[Fren]

I'm already imagining the first annual shareholder event, filled with stink ditch mods and their public freak outs. Please let it happen.

 

[No Batty Boys in Jamaica]

Lmao, Reddit is 14 years too late, or maybe just 4 years too late. They needed to do this before interest rates went above 4%. They’re at something like 7% now.

 

[Absolutego]

Lmao, Reddit is 14 years too late, or maybe just 4 years too late. They needed to do this before interest rates went above 4%. They’re at something like 7% now.

They should've done it in 2013-2015, but were too paralyzed by internal drama and weak leadership to make the move.
Even the one time they tried in that period resulted in Yishan handing the company to his fuckbuddy, whose job was to absorb all the negative press while they sanitized the site. Except she over-did it and the negative press was too much to push an IPO in that time frame, leading Conde Nast to grab spez by the collar and force him to provide stability at the top. And reddit is so bad off it still took him near a decade to actually get their ducks in a row to send a mail to the SEC.

 

[PointOfNoReturnPoint]

I'm already imagining the first annual shareholder event, filled with stink ditch mods and their public freak outs. Please let it happen.

This is giving them alot of credit for thinking they would even go outside. The fact that smash brothers competitions get together is amazing as it is. Do you really expect someone who thinks fascism is all around them can go outside and...interact with people they cant ban.

 

[No Batty Boys in Jamaica]

They should've done it in 2013-2015, but were too paralyzed by internal drama and weak leadership to make the move.
Even the one time they tried in that period resulted in Yishan handing the company to his fuckbuddy, whose job was to absorb all the negative press while they sanitized the site. Except she over-did it and the negative press was too much to push an IPO in that time frame, leading Conde Nast to grab spez by the collar and force him to provide stability at the top. And reddit is so bad off it still took him near a decade to actually get their ducks in a row to send a mail to the SEC.

I really hope it’s an absolute disaster. Not just because I hate Reddit. But because it could be the start of the current tech bubble popping. It’s going to burst when AI doesn’t deliver a big profit fast enough (and just like the internet in 2000, AI technology will still spread but the optimism about timeframe and extent will be overblown).

 

[sleeperagent]

Another media company for soros to ruin.

 

[linchan]

Another media company for soros to ruin.

You mean to tell me Soro has yet touched Reddit?

 

[Kankichi Ryotsu]

What we saw almost a year ago was the jannynacht. This might as well be the jannycaust. And just like the previous cause, Jews are involved in some capacity.

Well I only hope this one is real at least

 

[indigoisviolet]

How am i supposed to afford HRT AND reddit stock???????

End Stage Capitalism has failed us all again.

 

[Room Temp Shrimp]

Kiwi stock when?

 

[Mossy Trash Panda]

Well I only hope this one is real at least

Guys, let's be real here. As funny as it'll be when Reddit goes under, it's gonna open the floodgates. Does anyone remember what happened when Tumblr had an exodus? All the pr0n artists, psuedo intellectuals, and their followers, migrated over to Twixer, and ruined the site for years. If the Reddit Jannies, and their ilk escape containment, they'll infest another site like a Californian moving to a Red State.

 

[tofudelivery]

The following things are really shocking to me:

1. How the fuck are they making almost a billion dollars for a nothing site
2. How are they still losing 90 million?
3. Why is Spez making twice as much as Tim Cook made last year to run Apple, a trillion dollar company that makes almost 400 billion dollars a year? Hell, Google gave Sundar a big reward for layoffs and he made not much more than Spez.

Holy clown world.