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

Net neutrality rules continue to revolve around the Trump administration's current IT agenda of 5G telecom transformation.

Becky Berkman

2018-05-15 08:40:00 Tuesday ET

Net neutrality rules continue to revolve around the Trump administration's current IT agenda of 5G telecom transformation.

Net neutrality rules continue to revolve around the Trump administration's current IT agenda of 5G telecom transformation. Republican Senate passes the

+See More

This infographic visualization summarizes the key habits and investment styles of highly successful entrepreneurs.

Chanel Holden

2017-12-19 09:39:00 Tuesday ET

This infographic visualization summarizes the key habits and investment styles of highly successful entrepreneurs.

From Oprah Winfrey​ to Bill Gates​, this infographic visualization summarizes the key habits and investment styles of highly successful entrepreneurs:

+See More

We share famous inspirational stock market quotes by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, and several others.

Laura Hermes

2018-08-31 08:42:00 Friday ET

We share famous inspirational stock market quotes by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, and several others.

We share several famous inspirational stock market quotes by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Benjamin Graham, Ben Franklin, Philip Fisher, and Michael Jensen.

+See More

Government intervention remains a major influence over global trade, finance, and technology.

Amy Hamilton

2023-08-31 10:22:00 Thursday ET

Government intervention remains a major influence over global trade, finance, and technology.

Government intervention remains a major influence over global trade, finance, and technology. Nowadays, many governments tend to eschew common ownership

+See More

Corporate strategies, portfolio choices, and management memes add value and drive business process improvements over time.

Jacob Miramar

2020-08-19 10:32:00 Wednesday ET

Corporate strategies, portfolio choices, and management memes add value and drive business process improvements over time.

Corporate strategies, portfolio choices, and management memes add value and drive business process improvements over time. Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead,

+See More

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies in Congress to rise up to the challenge of public outrage.

Rose Prince

2018-04-07 09:36:00 Saturday ET

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies in Congress to rise up to the challenge of public outrage.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies in Congress to rise up to the challenge of public outrage in response to the Cambridge Analytica data debacle and use

+See More