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

Precautionary-motive and agency reasons for corporate cash management

Monica McNeil

2022-10-05 08:24:00 Wednesday ET

Precautionary-motive and agency reasons for corporate cash management

Precautionary-motive and agency reasons for corporate cash management Bates, Kahle, and Stulz (JF 2009) empirically find that public firms have doubled t

+See More

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indices from 2017 to 2020.

Andy Yeh Alpha

2020-02-02 10:31:00 Sunday ET

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indices from 2017 to 2020.

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms the major stock market benchmarks such as S&P 500, MSCI, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq. We implement

+See More

The Economist delves into the modern perils of tech titans such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Jacob Miramar

2018-01-12 07:37:00 Friday ET

The Economist delves into the modern perils of tech titans such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

The Economist delves into the modern perils of tech titans such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. These key tech titans often receive plaudits for mak

+See More

Warren Buffett invests in American stocks across energy, transport, and finance etc.

Daphne Basel

2017-07-07 10:33:00 Friday ET

Warren Buffett invests in American stocks across energy, transport, and finance etc.

Warren Buffett invests in American stocks across numerous industries such as energy, air transport, finance, technology, retail provision, and so forth.

+See More

Tencent Music Entertainment debuts its IPO on NYSE to strike a chord with stock market investors.

Amy Hamilton

2018-12-19 17:41:00 Wednesday ET

Tencent Music Entertainment debuts its IPO on NYSE to strike a chord with stock market investors.

Tencent Music Entertainment debuts its IPO on NYSE to strike a chord with stock market investors. Tencent Music goes public and marks the biggest IPO by a m

+See More

Facebook, Twitter, and Google executives explain the scope of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election.

Apple Boston

2017-09-19 05:34:00 Tuesday ET

Facebook, Twitter, and Google executives explain the scope of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google executives head before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain the scope of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential el

+See More