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

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Apple (U.S. stock symbol: $AAPL).

Laura Hermes

2025-09-13 12:23:00 Saturday ET

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Apple (U.S. stock symbol: $AAPL).

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fund

+See More

Eric Posner and Glen Weyl propose radical reforms to resolve key market design problems for better democracy and globalization.

Chanel Holden

2023-02-14 09:31:00 Tuesday ET

Eric Posner and Glen Weyl propose radical reforms to resolve key market design problems for better democracy and globalization.

Eric Posner and Glen Weyl propose radical reforms to resolve key market design problems for better democracy and globalization. Eric Posner and Glen Weyl

+See More

Trump administration imposes 20%-50% tariffs on Turkish imports due to a recent spat over the detention of an American pastor.

Apple Boston

2018-08-11 14:35:00 Saturday ET

Trump administration imposes 20%-50% tariffs on Turkish imports due to a recent spat over the detention of an American pastor.

The Trump administration imposes 20%-50% tariffs on Turkish imports due to a recent spat over the detention of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, in Turkey

+See More

European economic integration seems to have gone backwards primarily due to the recent Brexit movement.

Daisy Harvey

2019-10-19 16:35:00 Saturday ET

European economic integration seems to have gone backwards primarily due to the recent Brexit movement.

European economic integration seems to have gone backwards primarily due to the recent Brexit movement. Brexit, key European sovereign debt, and French and

+See More

Management consultants can build sustainable trust-driven client relations through the accelerant curve of business value creation.

Monica McNeil

2020-11-17 08:27:00 Tuesday ET

Management consultants can build sustainable trust-driven client relations through the accelerant curve of business value creation.

Management consultants can build sustainable trust-driven client relations through the accelerant curve of business value creation. Alan Weiss (2016)

+See More

We assess how stablecoins and blockchains can combine to strengthen the U.S. Treasury bond market after the recent U.S. congressional passage of the GENIUS Act.

John Fourier

2027-07-31 13:25:00 Saturday ET

We assess how stablecoins and blockchains can combine to strengthen the U.S. Treasury bond market after the recent U.S. congressional passage of the GENIUS Act.

In the broader context of stablecoins for asset tokenization worldwide, many governments now seek to enter the global markets for stablecoins and other U.S.

+See More