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

Apple settles its 2-year intellectual property lawsuit with Qualcomm by agreeing to a multi-year patent license.

Charlene Vos

2019-05-01 09:27:00 Wednesday ET

Apple settles its 2-year intellectual property lawsuit with Qualcomm by agreeing to a multi-year patent license.

Apple settles its 2-year intellectual property lawsuit with Qualcomm by agreeing to a multi-year patent license with royalty payments to the microchip maker

+See More

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicates that the Trump team puts the trade war with China on hold.

Olivia London

2018-05-19 09:29:00 Saturday ET

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicates that the Trump team puts the trade war with China on hold.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicates that the Trump team puts the trade war with China on hold. The interim suspension of U.S. tariffs should offer in

+See More

The Chinese administration delivers a written response to U.S. demands for trade reforms.

Olivia London

2018-11-25 12:37:00 Sunday ET

The Chinese administration delivers a written response to U.S. demands for trade reforms.

The Chinese administration delivers a written response to U.S. demands for trade reforms. This strategic move helps trigger more formal negotiations between

+See More

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Apple Boston

2022-02-25 00:00:00 Friday ET

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction  The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) of Sharpe (1964), Lintner (1965), and Bla

+See More

The Economist suggests that the world has learned few lessons of the global financial crisis from 2008 to 2009.

Becky Berkman

2018-09-07 07:33:00 Friday ET

The Economist suggests that the world has learned few lessons of the global financial crisis from 2008 to 2009.

The Economist re-evaluates the realistic scenario that the world has learned few lessons of the global financial crisis from 2008 to 2009 over the past deca

+See More

Personal finance author William Danko shares 3 top secrets for better wealth creation.

Rose Prince

2018-12-01 11:37:00 Saturday ET

Personal finance author William Danko shares 3 top secrets for better wealth creation.

As the solo author of the books Millionaire Next Door and Richer Than Millionaire, William Danko shares 3 top secrets for *better wealth creation*. True pro

+See More