Spotify considers directly selling its shares to the retail public with no underwriter involvement.

Rose Prince

2018-01-08 10:37:00 Mon ET

Spotify considers directly selling its shares to the retail public with no underwriter involvement. The music-streaming company plans a direct list on NYSE in lieu of a hot IPO. This alternative procedure can be cheaper, faster, and less legally risky to the issuer. The issuer may then lose its first-day price run-up in a hot IPO, which seldom benefits anyone apart from the institutional investors who receive an initial allocation of shares. In contrast, most startups file for an IPO through investment banks. These underwriters round up institutional investors to buy the issuer's fresh shares in order to establish a fair market price. Through a promotional roadshow, the underwriters commit to covering these new shares in their due diligence and fair valuation. The underwriters receive a considerable bounty in the order of 3%-5% of the IPO price (e.g. $300 million fee-payment to Alibaba's underwriters).

As cash-rich companies such as Spotify, Uber, and Airbnb have little incentive to raise capital via IPOs, these cash cows prefer to directly list on stock exchanges. Spotify can thus bypass firm commitment on the part of IPO-fee-driven investment banks. Nevertheless, the direct list may expose Spotify to bear raid by short-sellers, little underwriter liability, and less blue-sky transparency. This direct list option may attract more unicorns into the U.S. public stock market.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

President Donald Trump blames China for the long prevalent U.S. trade deficits and several other social and economic deficiencies.

Apple Boston

2025-01-22 08:35:08 Wednesday ET

President Donald Trump blames China for the long prevalent U.S. trade deficits and several other social and economic deficiencies.

President Donald Trump blames China for the long prevalent U.S. trade deficits and several other social and economic deficiencies. In recent years, Pres

+See More

The U.S. greenback soars in value as the Federal Reserve continues its interest rate hike.

Daisy Harvey

2018-10-07 13:39:00 Sunday ET

The U.S. greenback soars in value as the Federal Reserve continues its interest rate hike.

The U.S. greenback soars in value as the Federal Reserve continues its interest rate hike. With impressive service-sector data and non-farm payroll wage gro

+See More

Millennials can save to make a fortune with compound interest over 40 years.

Laura Hermes

2017-07-25 10:44:00 Tuesday ET

Millennials can save to make a fortune with compound interest over 40 years.

NerdWallet's new simulation suggests that a 25-year-old millennial who earns an inflation-free base salary of $40,456 and saves 15% each year faces a 99

+See More

Thomas Sowell argues that some economic reforms inadvertently exacerbate economic disparities.

Daisy Harvey

2023-11-14 08:24:00 Tuesday ET

Thomas Sowell argues that some economic reforms inadvertently exacerbate economic disparities.

Thomas Sowell argues that some economic reforms inadvertently exacerbate economic disparities. Thomas Sowell (2019)   Discrimination and econo

+See More

Sino-American trade talks make positive progress over 3 consecutive days.

Joseph Corr

2019-01-17 10:41:00 Thursday ET

Sino-American trade talks make positive progress over 3 consecutive days.

Sino-American trade talks make positive progress over 3 consecutive days as S&P 500 and global stock market indices post 3-day win streaks. Asian and Eu

+See More

The social media factor serves as a new measure of investor sentiment in addition to the fundamental factors.

Rose Prince

2017-05-07 06:39:00 Sunday ET

The social media factor serves as a new measure of investor sentiment in addition to the fundamental factors.

While the original five-factor asset pricing model arises from a quasi-lifetime of top empirical research by Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama and his long-time co

+See More