Reddit shares priced at $34 in largest IPO by social media company in years – The Daily Guardian
Popular social media platform Reddit is set to make its debut as a publicly traded company with a market value of $6.4 billion. The initial public offering was priced at $34 per share, leading to strong investor interest and oversubscription of four to five times.
Reddit aims to raise $748 million by selling 22 million shares, with trading scheduled to begin Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RDDT. While the platform was valued at $10 billion in a private funding round last year, the latest valuation reflects significant growth.
With approximately 267 million weekly average users and over 1 billion posts across more than 100,000 active subreddits, Reddit has become a prominent player in the social media landscape. The platform has been focused on reducing yearly losses and exploring new revenue streams, such as a partnership with Google to utilize user-generated data for training AI models.
However, concerns have been raised about potential manipulation of the stock price by some users, as a portion of the IPO was reserved for Reddit users, including unpaid moderators. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s efforts to boost revenue have at times faced criticism from users and moderators, leading to protests and temporary shutdowns of some online communities last year.
As Reddit prepares to go public, all eyes are on how the platform will navigate the challenges of balancing user engagement and revenue generation in the competitive social media market.