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

Warren Buffett approves Berkshire Hathaway to implement new meaningful stock repurchases.

Dan Rochefort

2018-11-15 12:35:00 Thursday ET

Warren Buffett approves Berkshire Hathaway to implement new meaningful stock repurchases.

Warren Buffett approves Berkshire Hathaway to implement new meaningful stock repurchases. Buffett sends a positive signal to the stock market with the Berks

+See More

U.S. tech titans increasingly hire PhD economists to help solve business problems.

Monica McNeil

2019-03-19 12:35:00 Tuesday ET

U.S. tech titans increasingly hire PhD economists to help solve business problems.

U.S. tech titans increasingly hire PhD economists to help solve business problems. These key tech titans include Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple,

+See More

Bill Gates shares with Mark Zuckerberg his prior personal experiences of testifying before Congress.

Peter Prince

2018-09-13 19:38:00 Thursday ET

Bill Gates shares with Mark Zuckerberg his prior personal experiences of testifying before Congress.

Bill Gates shares with Mark Zuckerberg his prior personal experiences of testifying on behalf of Microsoft before U.S. Congress. Both drop out of Harvard to

+See More

The global market for GLP-1 weight-loss medications can grow substantially to benefit more than 1 billion people worldwide by 2030.

Monica McNeil

2025-10-31 12:26:00 Friday ET

The global market for GLP-1 weight-loss medications can grow substantially to benefit more than 1 billion people worldwide by 2030.

With respect to wider weight loss treatment and obesity treatment, the global market for GLP-1 medications now grows substantially to benefit more than 1 bi

+See More

BAC chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett points out that U.S. corporate debt accumulation can cause the next financial crisis.

John Fourier

2018-09-23 08:37:00 Sunday ET

BAC chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett points out that U.S. corporate debt accumulation can cause the next financial crisis.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch's chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett points out that U.S. corporate debt (not household credit supply or bank ca

+See More

U.S. presidential election: a re-match between Biden and Trump in November 2024

Dan Rochefort

2024-03-19 03:35:58 Tuesday ET

U.S. presidential election: a re-match between Biden and Trump in November 2024

U.S. presidential election: a re-match between Biden and Trump in November 2024 We delve into the 5 major economic themes of the U.S. presidential electi

+See More