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

Today, tech titans continue to reshape and even disrupt global pharmaceutical investments for both better healthspan and longer lifespan.

John Fourier

2026-10-31 12:38:00 Saturday ET

Today, tech titans continue to reshape and even disrupt global pharmaceutical investments for both better healthspan and longer lifespan.

Today tech titans and billionaires continue to reshape global pharmaceutical investments for both better healthspan and longer lifespan. We discuss, desc

+See More

Calomiris and Haber delve into the comparative analysis of bank crises and politics in America, Britain, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

Dan Rochefort

2023-04-14 13:32:00 Friday ET

Calomiris and Haber delve into the comparative analysis of bank crises and politics in America, Britain, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

Calomiris and Haber delve into the comparative analysis of bank crises and politics in America, Britain, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Charles Calomiris an

+See More

Amazon acquires an Internet pharmacy PillPack in order to better compete with Walgreens and many other drug distributors.

Peter Prince

2018-06-29 11:41:00 Friday ET

Amazon acquires an Internet pharmacy PillPack in order to better compete with Walgreens and many other drug distributors.

Amazon acquires an Internet pharmacy PillPack in order to better compete with Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health, Rite Aid, and many other drug distributo

+See More

President Donald Trump unveils the dramatic *tax overhaul proposal*.

Daisy Harvey

2017-04-13 10:42:00 Thursday ET

President Donald Trump unveils the dramatic *tax overhaul proposal*.

President Donald Trump unveils the dramatic *tax overhaul proposal*. Through this tax plan, Trump replaces the current 7 income tax brackets with 3 leane

+See More

Rampant stock market fears shake investor confidence during the recent Fed Chair transition from Yellen to Powell.

Charlene Vos

2018-02-03 07:42:00 Saturday ET

Rampant stock market fears shake investor confidence during the recent Fed Chair transition from Yellen to Powell.

Quant Quake 2.0 shakes investor confidence with rampant stock market fears and doubts during the recent Fed Chair transition from Janet Yellen to Jerome Pow

+See More

Strategic managers envision lofty purposes to enjoy incremental consistent progress over time.

Jonah Whanau

2020-10-06 09:31:00 Tuesday ET

Strategic managers envision lofty purposes to enjoy incremental consistent progress over time.

Strategic managers envision lofty purposes to enjoy incremental consistent progress over time. Allison Rimm (2015)   The joy of strategy: a bu

+See More