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 International Monetary Fund (IMF) appoints Harvard professor Gita Gopinath as its chief economist.

Dan Rochefort

2018-10-09 08:40:00 Tuesday ET

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) appoints Harvard professor Gita Gopinath as its chief economist.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) appoints Harvard professor Gita Gopinath as its chief economist. Gopinath follows her PhD advisor and trailblazer Kenn

+See More

The Trump administration expects to reach an interim partial trade deal with China.

Jacob Miramar

2019-11-05 07:41:00 Tuesday ET

The Trump administration expects to reach an interim partial trade deal with China.

The Trump administration expects to reach an interim partial trade deal with China. This interim partial trade deal represents the first phase of a comprehe

+See More

AYA fintech finbuzz analytic report on the U.S. top tech titans Fall-Winter 2019

Andy Yeh Alpha

2019-11-06 12:29:00 Wednesday ET

AYA fintech finbuzz analytic report on the U.S. top tech titans Fall-Winter 2019

Our fintech finbuzz analytic report shines fresh light on the fundamental prospects of U.S. tech titans Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon (F.A.

+See More

The Trump administration teams up with western allies to bar HuaWei and other Chinese tech firms.

Daisy Harvey

2019-02-02 11:36:00 Saturday ET

The Trump administration teams up with western allies to bar HuaWei and other Chinese tech firms.

The Trump administration teams up with western allies to bar HuaWei and other Chinese tech firms from building the 5G high-speed infrastructure due to natio

+See More

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing announces his retirement in March 2018 with an incredible rags-to-riches life story.

John Fourier

2018-03-11 08:27:00 Sunday ET

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing announces his retirement in March 2018 with an incredible rags-to-riches life story.

At 89 years old, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing announces his retirement in March 2018. With a personal net worth of $35 billion, Li has an incredible ra

+See More

Americans continue to keep their financial New Year resolutions.

Jonah Whanau

2019-01-15 13:35:00 Tuesday ET

Americans continue to keep their financial New Year resolutions.

Americans continue to keep their financial New Year resolutions. First, Americans should save more money. Everyone needs a budget to ensure that key paychec

+See More