Business

Reddit’s planned IPO aims to raise up to $748 million

Published

2 months ago

March 10, 2024

Reddit Inc. and its investors are seeking to raise as much as $748 million in what would be one of the biggest initial public offerings so far this year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The social media platform and some of its current shareholders plan a sale of 22 million shares for $31 to $34 each, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information wasn’t public yet. The company was seeking a valuation of as much as $6.5 billion in the listing, Bloomberg News has reported.

The people said the company is setting aside about 1.76 million shares in the IPO to be bought by users and moderators who created accounts before Jan. 1. Those shares won’t be subject to a lockup period, meaning the owners can sell them on the opening day of trading, according to Reddit’s filing in February with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

A representative for Reddit declined to comment.

Reddit’s Valuation

Reddit’s more than two-year slog to listing reflects the ups and downs of the market, beginning with its initial confidential filing in 2021, when IPOs on US exchanges set an an all-time record of $339 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Reddit raised funds that year valuing it at $10 billion, and Bloomberg News reported the following year that it could be valued at as much as $15 billion in an IPO.

Meanwhile, IPOs in the US tumbled, reaching only $26 billion last year, the data show. In January, Bloomberg News reported that Reddit was weighing feedback from early meetings with potential IPO investors that it should consider a valuation of at least $5 billion.

The company is a high-profile addition to the year’s roster of newly and soon-to-be public companies. The biggest of those listings was the $1.57 billion offering by Amer Sports Inc. in January. Astera Labs Inc., a software maker focused on artificial intelligence, said in a filing Friday that it would seek up to $534 million in its IPO, which will likely proceed Reddit’s.

Reddit’s listing will be watched closely by IPO candidates such as Microsoft Corp.-backed data security start up Rubrik Inc. and health-care payments company Waystar Technologies Inc. Their deliberations come after a quartet of US listings led by semiconductor designer Arm Holdings Plc’s $5.23 billion offering in September failed to ignite a lasting rebound in the market.

Shrinking Losses

Founded in 2005, Reddit averaged 73.1 million daily active unique visitors in the fourth quarter, according to its February filing. The company reported a net loss of $91 million on revenue of $804 million in 2023, compared with a net loss of about $159 million on revenue of $667 million a year earlier.

Reddit’s largest shareholder is Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., part of the Newhouse family publishing empire that owns Conde Nast, which bought Reddit in 2006 and spun it out in 2011.

Reddit said its millions of loyal users and moderators pose risks as well as a benefit for the company. Redditors have a historically combative relationship with the site, launching revolts over everything from racism on the platform to executives’ staffing decisions.

Meme Stocks

Thousands of members of the WallStreetBets forum — which boasts around 15 million users and helped popularize meme stocks like GameStop Corp. — voted to boost a forum post about shorting Reddit’s stock when it begins trading. Their reasons varied from the company’s lack of profitability to competitive concerns.

The IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., according to Reddit’s filing. The company plans for its shares to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RDDT.

Reddit co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Steven Huffman said in a signed letter included in the filing that the company has many opportunities to grow both the platform and the business.

“Advertising is our first business, and advertisers of all sizes have discovered that Reddit is a great place to find high-intent customers that they aren’t able to reach elsewhere,” Huffman said. “Advertising on Reddit is rapidly evolving, and we are still in the early phases of growing this business.”

AI Licensing

Reddit said it’s in the early stages of allowing third parties to license access to data on the platform, including to train artificial intelligence models. The company said that in January it entered into data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203 million and terms ranging from two to three years. It expects a minimum of $66.4 million of revenue from those agreements this year, according to the filing.

Reddit also has announced a deal with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, allowing Google’s AI products to use Reddit data to improve their technology. Large language models often need vast troves of human-generated content to improve.

Huffman owns shares giving him 3.5% of the voting power. That includes Class B shares that will have 10 votes each compared with one each for the Class A shares to be sold in the IPO, the filing shows. Huffman also has a voting proxy agreement with Advance.

Other large shareholders include Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Wong, as well as FMR LLC and entities affiliated with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, Tencent Holdings Ltd., Vy Capital and Quiet Capital and Tacit Capital, according to the filing.

Huffman’s fellow co-founder, venture capitalist Alexis Ohanian, isn’t listed among the investors with stakes of 5% or more and isn’t named elsewhere in the filing.

— With assistance from Priya Anand, Ryan Gould, and Katie Roof

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Related Topics:A.I.Finance Google investing IPOs public offering Reddit Sam Altman Social media Tech Technology

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China’s EV makers are having more trouble paying their bills and now take 2 to 3 times longer than Tesla does

Published

5 hours ago

May 19, 2024

Pearl Liu, Linda Lew, Bloomberg

The time it’s taking for some of China’s electric-car makers to pay suppliers is ballooning — a further sign of stress in the nation’s increasingly cutthroat auto market.

Nio Inc. was taking around 295 days to clear its receipts payable, the vast majority of which are owed to suppliers, at the end of 2023 versus 197 days in 2021, according to the most recent available data compiled by Bloomberg. Xpeng Inc., another US-listed Chinese EV maker, was taking 221 days to honor its obligations to vendors and related parties, up from 179 days, the data show.

Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., by comparison, only took around 101 days, and that period has remained largely stable in the past three years.

The extended payment cycles are indicative of the pressure many automakers are under in China, where economic growth remains sluggish and consumer sentiment is subdued. That’s translated into reduced demand for electric cars, and the once fast-growing market is now beset with intense price wars and crunched profit margins.

Since Beijing phased out a national subsidy program for EV purchases in 2022, some smaller manufacturers have been pushed to the brink. WM Motors filed for restructuring in October, and Human Horizons Group Inc., the owner of premium EV brand HiPhi, suspended operations for at least six months in February.

“Everybody’s suffering,” said Jochen Siebert, managing director at consultancy JSC Automotive. “For manufacturers, price reductions mean less money coming in. So the money they owe to their suppliers may be necessary for them to remain liquid.”

Representatives for Nio and Xpeng didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Delayed payments are starting to have a knock-on effects at auto-parts suppliers, Siebert said.

“Tier-three or four suppliers really get bitten, because they can’t pass it on,” he said, adding the EV sector may see a “messy consolidation” as suppliers go bankrupt, quickly causing production issues for automakers down the line.

Indeed Jiaxing, Zhejiang-based Minth Group Ltd., a supplier of exterior body parts, saw its accounts and notes receivables surge more than 40% to 4.74 billion yuan ($656 million) as of December from the end of 2020, while its cash and equivalents shrank by almost one-third to 4.2 billion yuan over the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Hunan Yuneng New Energy Battery Material Co., which is a major supplier to BYD Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg, saw its accounts and notes receivables more than triple to 10.43 billion yuan at the end of 2022 from a year earlier, while cash reserves fell to 435.2 million yuan.

“The price war won’t end soon and the stress eventually will be delivered to suppliers,” said Zhu Lin, a Shanghai-based managing director with turnaround management firm Alvarez & Marsal.

“We’ve seen more car components producers approaching us to improve their performance and some of them are thinking about offloading unprofitable businesses,” Zhu said. “The weak ones in the supply chain will face a high risk of being kicked out of the game.”

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Business

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region kill at least 11

Published

9 hours ago

May 19, 2024

ArticleHeader-author

A view shows a crater that appeared after a Russian missile strike on a structure at a resort, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine May 19, 2024. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

Valentyn Ogirenko | Reuters

Russia struck a busy lakeside resort on the edge of Ukraine’s second largest city on Sunday and also attacked villages in the surrounding region, killing at least 11 people and wounding scores.

The missile strikes were the latest in what have been constant Russian attacks in recent weeks on the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, where Russian troops have launched an offensive.

Valentyna, 69, had blood running down her face at the lakeside resort area where her home had been destroyed and a busy restaurant nearby been obliterated. Her husband was killed down by the water, she said, gesturing to the area near the shore where there was now a crater, rubble and corpses.

“To lose my husband, to lose my house, to lose everything in the world, it hurts, it hurts me,” she shouted through tears “They (the Russians) are animals, why do they need to kill people?”

Prosecutors said six people were killed there, one was still missing and 27 wounded. Rescuers said the initial strike was followed by a second strike around 20 minutes later, targeting emergency crews at the scene in a so-called “double tap”.

“There were never any soldiers here,” said Yaroslav Trofimko, a police inspector who arrived after the first strike and was then caught up in the second. “It was a Sunday, people were supposed to be here to rest, children were supposed to he here, pregnant women, resting, enjoying a normal way of life.”

Another five people were killed and 9 injured later in the day in two villages in Kupiansk district. Local governor Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces shelled two villages of the district with a self-propelled multiple rocket launcher.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again called on Western allies to supply Kyiv with additional air defence systems to protect Kharkiv and other cities.

“The world can stop Russian terror – and to do so, the lack of political will among leaders must be overcome,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

“Two Patriots for Kharkiv will make a fundamental difference,” he said, referring to Patriot missile defence systems. Air defence systems for other cities and sufficient support for soldiers on the front line would ensure Russia’s defeat, the president added

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