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The social media company has reportedly raised more than $500m as part of the IPO at a valuation of around $6.5bn.
Reddit has priced its IPO (initial public offering) at $34 per share in what has become the most anticipated stock exchange debut of the year.
The social media company founded nearly 20 years ago will begin trading on the New York stock exchange today (21 March) under the ticker symbol RDDT. The offering is expected to close on 25 March, subject to customary closing conditions.
Reddit, popularly known as the frontpage of the internet, finally filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last month, after years of anticipation.
The online forum first solidified plans to go public after submitting IPO paperwork with the SEC in December 2021. At the time, Reddit had been valued at $10bn after a $700m Series F investment led by Fidelity.
An unstable IPO market then delayed the San Francisco-based company’s plans to go public, until now.
“We are going public to advance our mission and become a stronger company. We hope going public will provide meaningful benefits to our community as well. Our users have a deep sense of ownership over the communities they create on Reddit,” CEO Steve Huffman said last month, who founded the company with Alexis Ohanian in 2005.
“We want this sense of ownership to be reflected in real ownership – for our users to be our owners. Becoming a public company makes this possible. With this in mind, we are excited to invite the users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to buy shares in our IPO, alongside our investors.”
Reddit has raised more than $500m as part of the IPO at a reported valuation of around $6.4bn, lower than the previous valuation but showing signs of investor excitement.
More than 22m shares of its Class A common stock were made available, of which Reddit is selling around 15.2m. The company will not receive any proceeds from sale of the remaining shares, which will be sold by selling stockholders.
Last week, Reddit launched a new advertising format that is designed to increase ad engagement with users on the platform. The company said their free-form ads let advertisers share “in-depth” information by combining image, video and text using ready-made templates.
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