The social-media platform Reddit has announced more details for what’s expected to be one of the biggest initial public offerings of the year.
The company and its investors are planning to sell a combined 22 million shares at a price of $31 to $34 apiece, according to a Monday Securities and Exchange Commission filing. A pricing at the top end of that range would yield $748 million in proceeds. About 15.3 million of the 22 million shares are set to be sold by the company. The rest will be sold by the other investors, who are Reddit employees.
Reddit’s expected pricing range sets a fully diluted valuation range between $5.8 billion and $6.4 billion, marking a sharp decrease from the $10 billion private valuation the company achieved in its last funding round, in August 2021.
In an attempt to attract the retail traders that have made its r/WallStreetBets forum such an influential force, Reddit has reserved 8% of the total shares on offer for users and moderators who created accounts before January 1, as well friends and family of various board members and employees. Those shares won’t be under lockup, meaning their owners can sell their shares on the first official trading day.
Reddit’s IPO has been in the works since 2021. That was at the peak of the meme-stock mania, when troves of retail investors active on subreddits such as r/WallStreetBets executed short squeezes on stocks including GameStop and AMC, driving prices “to the moon.”
Wall Street will be closely watching Reddit as a signal for how the overall IPO market is doing. The landscape has been shaky lately, with offerings from Birkenstock to Instacart failing to get strong traction.
