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

Harvard macrofinance professor Robert Barro sees no good reasons for the recent sudden reversal of U.S. monetary policy normalization.

Laura Hermes

2019-09-09 20:38:00 Monday ET

Harvard macrofinance professor Robert Barro sees no good reasons for the recent sudden reversal of U.S. monetary policy normalization.

Harvard macrofinance professor Robert Barro sees no good reasons for the recent sudden reversal of U.S. monetary policy normalization. As Federal Reserve Ch

+See More

The Trump team now aims to make progress on health care, infrastructure, social welfare, and immigration.

Monica McNeil

2018-01-06 07:32:00 Saturday ET

The Trump team now aims to make progress on health care, infrastructure, social welfare, and immigration.

Subsequent to the Trump tax cuts for Christmas in December 2017, the one-year-old Trump presidency now aims to make progress on health care, infrastructure,

+See More

Financial institutions benefit from higher equity risk premiums and interest rate spreads.

Charlene Vos

2017-04-01 06:40:00 Saturday ET

Financial institutions benefit from higher equity risk premiums and interest rate spreads.

With the current interest rate hike, large banks and insurance companies are likely to benefit from higher equity risk premiums and interest rate spreads.

+See More

President Trump escalates the current Sino-American trade war by imposing 25% tariffs on $200 billion Chinese imports.

Rose Prince

2018-08-03 07:33:00 Friday ET

President Trump escalates the current Sino-American trade war by imposing 25% tariffs on $200 billion Chinese imports.

President Trump escalates the current Sino-American trade war by imposing 25% tariffs on $200 billion Chinese imports. These tariffs encompass chemical prod

+See More

Buffett discusses Berkshire's cash ambition, its reinsurance business, and his succession plan.

Becky Berkman

2018-02-23 09:35:00 Friday ET

Buffett discusses Berkshire's cash ambition, its reinsurance business, and his succession plan.

Warren Buffett releases his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders as of February 2018. Buffett discusses Berkshire's core cash ambition, its

+See More

Addendum on USPTO fintech patent protection and accreditation

Andy Yeh Alpha

2023-01-11 09:26:00 Wednesday ET

Addendum on USPTO fintech patent protection and accreditation

Addendum on USPTO fintech patent protection and accreditation As of early-January 2023, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has approved our U.S

+See More