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

It can be practical for the U.S. to impose the 2% Warren wealth tax on the rich.

Dan Rochefort

2019-02-03 13:39:00 Sunday ET

It can be practical for the U.S. to impose the 2% Warren wealth tax on the rich.

It can be practical for the U.S. to impose the 2% wealth tax on the rich. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes a 2% wealth tax on the richest Americ

+See More

Chicago finance professor Raghuram Rajan suggests that free markets need populist support against an unholy alliance of private-sector and state elites.

John Fourier

2019-05-21 12:37:00 Tuesday ET

Chicago finance professor Raghuram Rajan suggests that free markets need populist support against an unholy alliance of private-sector and state elites.

Chicago finance professor Raghuram Rajan shows that free markets need populist support against an unholy alliance of private-sector and state elites. When a

+See More

Artificial intelligence, 5G, and virtual reality can help transform global trade, finance, and technology.

Peter Prince

2021-05-20 10:30:00 Thursday ET

Artificial intelligence, 5G, and virtual reality can help transform global trade, finance, and technology.

Artificial intelligence, 5G, and virtual reality can help transform global trade, finance, and technology. Core trade technological advances and disruptive

+See More

Main reasons for share repurchases

Apple Boston

2022-09-25 09:34:00 Sunday ET

Main reasons for share repurchases

Main reasons for share repurchases Temporary market undervaluation often induces corporate incumbents to initiate a share repurchase program to boost the

+See More

What are the mainstream legal origins of President Trump's new tariff policies?

Amy Hamilton

2025-06-13 08:23:00 Friday ET

What are the mainstream legal origins of President Trump's new tariff policies?

What are the mainstream legal origins of President Trump’s new tariff policies? We delve into the mainstream legal origins of President Trump&rsquo

+See More

President-Elect Donald Trump wants Apple and its tech peers to consider better and greater high-tech job creation in America.

James Campbell

2017-01-03 03:26:00 Tuesday ET

President-Elect Donald Trump wants Apple and its tech peers to consider better and greater high-tech job creation in America.

President-Elect Donald Trump wants Apple and its tech peers to consider better and greater high-tech job creation in America. Apple has asked its primary

+See More