The social media site said that it has not yet determined the number of shares to be offered or their price range. It said that the IPO is expected to occur after the US Securities and Exchange Commission “completes its review process subject to market and other conditions.”
Message boards on Reddit, most notably WallStreetBets, have played a major role in popularizing so-called meme stocks. Equities in which trading activity is largely driven by commentary on social media. Additionally, posts in WallStreetBets have played a major role in several trading controversies in 2021, such as the short squeezes on GameStop Corp. (GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC).
Reddit.com is the 20th most-visited website in the world in 2021 according to SimilarWeb. The community-driven platform allows users to create forums called “subreddits” on topics ranging from the news to country-specific forums to niche subjects. There are over 130,000 active subreddits. The website often brands itself as the “front page of the internet”.
In August, Reddit raked in a hefty $410 million financing led by Fidelity, valuing it at $10 billion. It had plans to close out the round, a Series F, at $700 million at the time. The company said earlier this year that it planned to double its staff by the end of 2021 to around 1,400 employees.
As of January, Reddit had more than 52 million daily active users and over 100,000 communities. In comparison, Facebook had nearly 2 billion daily active users in September. While Twitter had 211 million monetizable daily active users. A term for users who see the ads placed on their platforms.
The company’s CEO Steve Huffman told the New York Times that Fidelity’s investment would give it more time to decide when and how to go public.
Wall Street saw a massive number of debuts in 2021. In the first nine months of this year, 785 companies have gone public in the United States, compared to 664 for all of 1996. The dawn of the internet stock mania — and 555 in 2020.
Dating app Bumble, plant-based milk company Oatly, and online brokerage giant Robinhood are among the more high-profile “unicorn” companies to go public in 2021.
Reddit, meanwhile, is a highly popular social media site. It even gained notoriety on Wall Street earlier this year because of one of its boards, WallStreetBets.
Company History
Reddit, based in San Francisco, was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian, and the late Aaron Swartz. While Reddit has attracted millions of experts and enthusiasts participating in its niche discussion groups. Its development as a major profit-making business has trailed other major social media sites.
