Social Media company Reddit debuts IPO
Nineteen years after its founding and two years after filing the paperwork to go public, social media site Reddit finally ventured into the U.S. stock market on March 21, 2024.
Shares of the San Francisco-based company gained 48% on its first day of trading over its IPO price of $34 a share set on Wednesday, March 20, 2024.
The closing price of $50.44 gave Reddit, whose ticker is RDDT, a market cap of $8 billion based on the number of outstanding shares stated in its SEC filings, according to Bloomberg.
The company raised $748 million based on its IPO price.
Reddit’s first-day performance came one day after the public debut of AI chipmaker Astera Labs (ALAB), which gained 72% on its first day of trading over its IPO price.
The strong opening IPO performance of both Reddit and Astera Labs could potentially bode well for other tech-related startups considering IPOs. Next month, Rubrik, a cybersecurity software maker, also plans to go public in April, according to Reuters. Other tech startups reportedly weighing IPOs in the near future include Circle Internet Financial and Swedish fintech firm Klarna.
Reddit was founded in 2005, one year after Facebook, now Meta Platforms. But while Facebook went public in 2012, Reddit remained private.
Reddit’s list of investors includes Advance Publications, publisher of Conde Nast, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments, Tencent, Foundation Capital, Sequoia Capital, and even tech luminaries like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
Reddit’s Forge Price™, as of March 20, 2024, was $39.57 just prior to going public, which implied a $6.42 billion valuation at the time.
About the Author
John Kimelman is a veteran journalist who has worked at Barron’s and CNBC covering such topics as investing and commercial banking. Mr. Kimelman has received compensation from Forge Global, Inc. for authoring this article. Read more from John.