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)

 

[Kulee Baba]

>shameless begging for money program
>called DSP

I imagine a literal Reddit approved DSP. Good lord.

 

[Alaric the Visigoth]

When I used to use Reddit one of my favorite subs to frequent was the r/consoom (I think that's the right name) really nothing too bad. just people coming together dunk on the bullshit consumerist culture Hollywood and silicon valley tries to push. The moment that sub was killed by Reddit's corporate jannies there was no longer a reason for me to stay. If Reddit didn't cater to the vapid, soyboy, literal cucks who goon 24/7 and groom minors then maybe people would give a shit about their financial straits.

TLDR Total Reddit death

 

[twitter clout chaser]

How is reddit an IPO when they dont even age verify the women who post on r/gonewild or similar subreddits. You'd think they'd do away with these type of porn subreddit but i guess not . I guess they want to be liable for sharing very not so legal stuff

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

What's left though? Facebook and Youtube gave way to Youtube Shorts, which have failed imo. Tiktok ijust can't do it. I think the forum platform of medium form is probably the best. On here you can only quote so many lines. Threads, bssky, are going to fail because Twitter/X has the short form. The KF/AVSForum of old has the best long term viability to me. What's left? 10 second and 10 word posts? I hope not.

I agree with you. But we are already part of the demographic who values that alternative and we are already here. Speaking broadly i don't see it catching on among the appbrains that only ever interacted with the internet because fb and smartphones came along. They either jump from one malware novelty app to the next, i also notice a smaller minority of millenials my age just quitting altogether.

 

[Ghostse]

So what's the right call here?

There is only one right call. On IPO day you simply Kill redditors. Behead redditors. Roundhouse kick a redditor into the concrete floor of their mother's basement. Slam dunk a redditor that is molesting a baby into the trashcan. Crucify filthy redditors while wearing thick gloves. Defecate in a redditors food. Launch redditors into the sun with heavy lift rockets. Stir fry redditors in a wok. Toss redditors into active volcanoes. Urinate into a /r/carhate mod's gas tank. Get another person to assist with Judo throwing redditors into a wood chipper, using your legs not your back. Twist redditors' heads off. Report reddit camwhores to the IRS. Karate chop redditors in half. Curb stomp pregnant black redditors. Trap redditors in quicksand. Crush redditors in the trash compactor. Liquefy redditors in a vat of acid. Eat redditors. Dissect reddiotrs. Exterminate redditors in the gas chamber. Stomp redditor skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate redditors in the oven. Lobotomize redditors. Mandatory abortions for redditors. Grind redditor karma scores in the garbage disposal. Drown redditors in their own forehead grease. Vaporize redditors with a ray gun. Kick old redditors down the stairs. Feed redditors to alligators. Slice redditors with a katana.

 

[Trigger Me Timbers]

So Reddit is not only still never ever gonna pay their jannis, but also now gonna make them cereal bag holders? This is delicious.

I can’t wait to see the head power mod of r/latestagecapitalism start posting like he’s on Wall Street bets and misinterpreting every single move Reddit makes as a way to make more gains, and an ironically posting “thanks for the tasty dip!” Every time Reddit makes from page news for doing something retarded.

“You have been banned from r/latestagecapitalism for calling shareholders evil.

Mod note; whilst we at late stage capitalism all agree, that corporations and publicly traded entities are the most evil things on planet earth. Please not disparage Reddits shareholders is against our rules and harms the bottom line of Reddit staff.

To get un banned please send a screenshot of at least 20,000 shares you own in Reddit (NADAC: REEE) be be unbanned

Waagmi”

 

[Flabba Wabba Jabba]

Reddit is one of the last places where the vast majority of content is user generated, as opposed to the AI SEO'd hellscape that modern web has become. That's why adding "reddit" to the end of your searches brings better results

Reddit is unironically the last bastion of user-generated content in the modern hellscape of corponet, and losing it would be catastrophic

Sad But True.

 

[pikachudidnothingwrong]

Good luck (but not really) you spent a decade ruining your site for this. (and special feel-feels too OC)

Hope this goes like the business real estate rental company and other failed attempts! Who would be stupid enough to get involved with a site that spent the last decade kicking out most of their communities and users over ideological purity. Creating such a toxic echo chamber that it could be easily mistaken for a partisan political site. With major subs free to brigade any sub, topic or discussion they want. (as long as they have the correct opinions) backed up by power mods inserted into all mid to large subs as back up and admins that will micromanage simple posts to defend narratives in last resort.

It's not their choice to turn the site into an enforced echo chamber itself that pisses me off.. It's that they spent a decade gobbling up so many fandoms and forums before doing it. They got so much centered there and then they pulled the rug out and started going as far as banning users who never leave specific subs over something as simple as not agreeing with censorship or troon issues in a topic. It may seem a bit tinfoil hat but I still think it was a willful attempt at takeover and cleansing a shitload of fandoms and communities. (not saying they intended that from the beginning but certainly once they realized they had the power to)

 

[Dr Sprokeberg]

This could be the final straw that leads a mass exodus, main problem is that typically Reddit clones have tended to fail pretty quickly (case in point Ruqqus and Voat). Lemmy still seems to be alive, but it's full of tankies and plus the federated nature tends to confuse normal users.

When I used to use Reddit one of my favorite subs to frequent was the r/consoom (I think that's the right name) really nothing too bad. just people coming together dunk on the bullshit consumerist culture Hollywood and silicon valley tries to push. The moment that sub was killed by Reddit's corporate jannies there was no longer a reason for me to stay. If Reddit didn't cater to the vapid, soyboy, literal cucks who goon 24/7 and groom minors then maybe people would give a shit about their financial straits.

TLDR Total Reddit death
View attachment 5754760

Yep, i remember that. That, r/shitneoconssay, and r/coomer pretty much all got banned at once. And r/drama pretty much nuked itself around that time. Probably the day right-wing reddit died, even if it was probably already on life support by then. Now it's basically just normie stuff like r/conservative and r/kotakuinaction that's left.

 

[A Flying Nun]

Reddit is one of the last places where the vast majority of content is user generated

A big caveat though is that the closer you get to the main subs, the more you run into bots and shilled efforts.

The thing that makes it resilient is how freely users can make their own subs, so it means the specialized subs focusing on individual topics fill the criteria you mentioned.

A hilarious way this could backfire is that the jannies themselves have often been accused of being the very people forcing their politics down everyone's throats and ensuring that political propaganda gets spouted everywhere. You can find a number of subs that are all but inactive, but somehow mysteriously shit out a front page thread every couple weeks, and it's always the same jannies behind those subs.

Now imagine if those same jannies have such empty lives (difficult to imagine, I know) that they start taking out a second mortgage to buy reddit stock with, then acting now as investors, they start demanding the same exact dipshit ideas they requested as jannies, except now with more sway. I somehow doubt it would happen because I doubt any of the jannies actually make enough to compete with investors, but it would be an absolutely hilarious story if a company went up "because our investors are fucking retarded and know nothing about running a business."

 

[Rungle]

this is NOT keanu reeves wholesome

 

[Ted Kaczynski]

Snoosisters…… did we get too cocky??? It’s so joever….


Do reddit’s new investors know that Ghislaine Maxwell was a prolific moderator for years and that many of their top mods were literal grooming pedophiles or homosexuals? lol.

I hope this spells the death of that stupid fucking site. It’s been absolute shit for the better part of 10 years, hopefully this will be the end of the Reddit menace

 

[PhoBingas]

Question should be: what happens next? If Reddit collapses or closes or whatever, where does the user base go? Do forums make a comeback? Or will some equally-pozzed (maybe even more so) alternative spring up?

Honestly not sure what will happen if Reddit goes away. When subreddits like ip2 and r/drama got axed, they came back with a really similar feel to reddit on other sites. I imagine the people that give enough of a shit about their communities will start up their own sites, but I'm gonna guess that upwards of 90% of subreddits just vanish.

 

[Chazzed Up]

This could be the final straw that leads a mass exodus, main problem is that typically Reddit clones have tended to fail pretty quickly (case in point Ruqqus and Voat).

While not a clone, I'd imagine a lot of users of Reddit communities for dedicated interests/topics also have their own Discord servers at this point. Much as I don't care for it, Reddit does have a unique archive of information on a wide variety of topics, and it's indexed on search engines, which is helpful. Of course, the information isn't always going to be correct, but it can be helpful to answer practical questions that others have most likely asked in the past. 4chan kind of has a similar structure but it's not easily searched via search engines, which is good in a lot of ways but also makes accessing that information a tough task, especially with content getting scrubbed pretty regularly.

Now it's basically just normie stuff like r/conservative and r/kotakuinaction that's left.

Those people might as well just head on over to Twitter, their gay slapfighting is best facilitated by that kind of social media platform anyway. Most narcs are hanging out on Twitter these days, they seem to get an even more potent fix of attention than upvoting ever got them. It's like having their own personal subreddit where they can spam threads all day.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Now imagine if those same jannies have such empty lives (difficult to imagine, I know) that they start taking out a second mortgage to buy reddit stock with, then acting now as investors, they start demanding the same exact dipshit ideas they requested as jannies, except now with more sway. I somehow doubt it would happen because I doubt any of the jannies actually make enough to compete with investors, but it would be an absolutely hilarious story if a company went up "because our investors are fucking retarded and know nothing about running a business."

Luckily for everyone involved, the IPO is for Class A shares, at one vote a pop compared to the Class B shares at ten a pop, that they're not selling. Effectively, the IPO investors are physically incapable of having any influence in shareholder voting. At absolute best, they could serve as a tiebreaker for an extremely close vote.

There was a (brief) period where Reddit could be a fun site. I’m older and I can’t even remember how long ago that was. Over a decade ago at least. I remember a lot of the big subreddits even trending somewhat conservative in the comments. Then slowly the power troons took over each subreddit one by one.

Somewhere between 2013 and 2015 - Degeneracy had started to ramp up and the site already had its fucked up corners, but full toxic politics hadn't fully invaded quite yet, censorship was fairly limited, and the community actually did do cool shit like Twitch Plays Pokemon. The fucked up corners were tolerated but shunned (the best possible outcome for all involved, more or less) and it wasn't too difficult to ignore or avoid them. They were slowly sliding towards the powermods being a bit weird but it wasn't catastrophic yet.

Once 2016 turned Reddit into a political weapon, it was over. The powermods went ballistic, justified enemies and hate became a thing, everything was pressured to go into lockstep, and wrongthink became a crime.

Honestly not sure what will happen if Reddit goes away. When subreddits like ip2 and r/drama got axed, they came back with a really similar feel to reddit on other sites. I imagine the people that give enough of a shit about their communities will start up their own sites, but I'm gonna guess that upwards of 90% of subreddits just vanish.

My expectation entirely. The truly interested, based around real passions and shit will regroup, and the rest will scatter. Nobody will want to front for "meme" subreddits and aggregators. Places like r/Justrolledintotheshop are in the top 1% of reddit and aggregate some funny shit, but nobody is going to be willing to pay the hosting fees for the website to replace it, much less the content hosting and bandwidth on it.

 

[Kulee Baba]

How is reddit an IPO when they dont even age verify the women who post on r/gonewild or similar subreddits. You'd think they'd do away with these type of porn subreddit but i guess not . I guess they want to be liable for sharing very not so legal stuff

I’m happily awaiting the next Redditor revolt when it becomes required to have a cell phone number attached to your account (ala Twitter).

That I imagine will create another Total Retard War for Reddit like when they fucked over the 3rd Party APIs. If my memory is right Reddit coup’d out all jannies who were closing the boards as a sign of protest.

 

[FiveStarAce]

Wait, Reddit was this cucked without being publicly traded? It wasn't ESG?

They do it for free.

 

[Fishmalk Observer]

I REALLY need to know how to short this. Whats the way ? Should i get a meeting at my bank ?

 

[Fareal]

The unique thing about Reddit is that no matter your politics, no matter your interests, no matter your views on pretty much anything...

...you think the site is a cesspit full of cancerous waste, i.e. the users.

 

[Crocodylus Acutus]

Soy is Good