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

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow points out that the recent U.S. dollar strength shows a clear sign of investor optimism.

James Campbell

2018-08-13 12:39:00 Monday ET

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow points out that the recent U.S. dollar strength shows a clear sign of investor optimism.

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow points out that the recent U.S. dollar strength shows a clear sign of investor confidence and optimism. Gree

+See More

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time.

Rose Prince

2018-02-27 09:35:00 Tuesday ET

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time.

Fed's new chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress for the first time. He vows to prevent price instability for U.S. consumers, firms, and finan

+See More

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan expects the U.S. economy to grow at 2.2%-2.5% in 2019-2020.

Becky Berkman

2019-06-11 12:33:00 Tuesday ET

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan expects the U.S. economy to grow at 2.2%-2.5% in 2019-2020.

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan expects the U.S. economy to grow at 2.2%-2.5% in 2019-2020 as inflation rises a bit. In an interview wit

+See More

U.S. yield curve inversion can be a sign but not a root cause of the next economic recession.

Dan Rochefort

2019-09-19 15:30:00 Thursday ET

U.S. yield curve inversion can be a sign but not a root cause of the next economic recession.

U.S. yield curve inversion can be a sign but not a root cause of the next economic recession. Treasury yield curve inversion helps predict each of the U.S.

+See More

Federal Reserve's interest rate hike may lead to an economic recession as credit supply growth ebbs and flows through the business cycle.

Monica McNeil

2018-06-14 10:35:00 Thursday ET

Federal Reserve's interest rate hike may lead to an economic recession as credit supply growth ebbs and flows through the business cycle.

The Federal Reserve's current interest rate hike may lead to the next economic recession as credit supply growth ebbs and flows through the business cyc

+See More

President Trump tweets his key decision to oust State Secretary Rex Tillerson due to intense disagreement over diplomatic affairs.

Fiona Sydney

2018-03-07 07:34:00 Wednesday ET

President Trump tweets his key decision to oust State Secretary Rex Tillerson due to intense disagreement over diplomatic affairs.

President Trump tweets his key decision to oust State Secretary Rex Tillerson after several months of intense disagreement over diplomatic affairs. Trump so

+See More