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

Berkeley tax economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez find fresh insights into wealth inequality in America.

Jacob Miramar

2019-06-27 10:39:00 Thursday ET

Berkeley tax economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez find fresh insights into wealth inequality in America.

Berkeley tax economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez find fresh insights into wealth inequality in America. Their latest estimates show that the top 0.1

+See More

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) continues to track major business risks in light of volatile stock markets.

Fiona Sydney

2019-01-11 10:33:00 Friday ET

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) continues to track major business risks in light of volatile stock markets.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) continues to track major business risks in light of volatile stock markets, elections, and geopolitics. EIU monitors g

+See More

AYA Analytica podcast provides fresh insights into the latest stock market news, economic trends, and investment portfolio strategies.

Andy Yeh Alpha

2019-01-21 10:37:00 Monday ET

AYA Analytica podcast provides fresh insights into the latest stock market news, economic trends, and investment portfolio strategies.

Andy Yeh Alpha (AYA) AYA Analytica financial health memo (FHM) podcast channel on YouTube January 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues

+See More

The global cloud expands what can be made digitally viable from electric vehicles (EV) and virtual reality (VR) headsets to artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.

Chanel Holden

2025-04-30 08:27:00 Wednesday ET

The global cloud expands what can be made digitally viable from electric vehicles (EV) and virtual reality (VR) headsets to artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.

The multiple layers of the world cloud Internet help expand what can be made digitally viable from electric vehicles (EV) and virtual reality (VR) headsets

+See More

Fed Chair Jay Powell suggests that the recent surge in U.S. business debt poses moderate risks to the economy.

Laura Hermes

2019-06-05 10:34:00 Wednesday ET

Fed Chair Jay Powell suggests that the recent surge in U.S. business debt poses moderate risks to the economy.

Fed Chair Jay Powell suggests that the recent surge in U.S. business debt poses moderate risks to the economy. Many corporate treasuries now carry about 40%

+See More

House Judiciary Committee summons senior executive reps of the tech titans to assess online platforms and their market power.

Peter Prince

2019-08-18 11:33:00 Sunday ET

House Judiciary Committee summons senior executive reps of the tech titans to assess online platforms and their market power.

House Judiciary Committee summons senior executive reps of the tech titans to assess online platforms and their market power. These companies are Facebook,

+See More