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

The Trump administration still expects to reach a Sino-U.S. trade agreement with better intellectual property protection and enforcement.

Apple Boston

2019-05-11 10:28:00 Saturday ET

The Trump administration still expects to reach a Sino-U.S. trade agreement with better intellectual property protection and enforcement.

The Trump administration still expects to reach a Sino-U.S. trade agreement with a better mechanism for intellectual property protection and enforcement. Pr

+See More

Warren Buffett points out that many people misunderstand his stock investment method in several ways.

Jonah Whanau

2017-06-21 05:36:00 Wednesday ET

Warren Buffett points out that many people misunderstand his stock investment method in several ways.

In his latest Berkshire Hathaway annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett points out that many people misunderstand his stock investment method in seve

+See More

Thomas Piketty connects the dots between economic growth and inequality worldwide with long-term global empirical evidence.

Chanel Holden

2023-05-28 10:24:00 Sunday ET

Thomas Piketty connects the dots between economic growth and inequality worldwide with long-term global empirical evidence.

Thomas Piketty connects the dots between economic growth and inequality worldwide with long-term global empirical evidence. Thomas Piketty (2017) &nbs

+See More

America and China cannot decouple decades of long-term collaboration in trade, finance, and technology.

Becky Berkman

2019-12-16 11:37:00 Monday ET

America and China cannot decouple decades of long-term collaboration in trade, finance, and technology.

America and China cannot decouple decades of long-term collaboration in trade, finance, and technology. In recent times, some economists claim that China ma

+See More

President Trump targets Amazon in his call for U.S. Postal Service to charge higher delivery prices on the ecommerce giant.

Laura Hermes

2018-01-03 08:38:00 Wednesday ET

President Trump targets Amazon in his call for U.S. Postal Service to charge higher delivery prices on the ecommerce giant.

President Trump targets Amazon in his call for U.S. Postal Service to charge high delivery prices on the ecommerce giant. Trump picks another fight with an

+See More

Paul Samuelson defines the mathematical evolution of price theory and then influences many economists in business cycle theory and macro asset management.

Joseph Corr

2023-05-14 12:31:00 Sunday ET

Paul Samuelson defines the mathematical evolution of price theory and then influences many economists in business cycle theory and macro asset management.

Paul Samuelson defines the mathematical evolution of economic price theory and thereby influences many economists in business cycle theory and macro asset m

+See More