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

Artificial intelligence continues to push boundaries for tech titans to sustain their disruptive innovations and competitive advantages.

Chanel Holden

2020-11-01 11:21:00 Sunday ET

Artificial intelligence continues to push boundaries for tech titans to sustain their disruptive innovations and competitive advantages.

Artificial intelligence continues to push boundaries for several tech titans to sustain their central disruptive innovations, competitive moats, and first-m

+See More

Thomas Sowell argues that some economic reforms inadvertently exacerbate economic disparities.

Daisy Harvey

2023-11-14 08:24:00 Tuesday ET

Thomas Sowell argues that some economic reforms inadvertently exacerbate economic disparities.

Thomas Sowell argues that some economic reforms inadvertently exacerbate economic disparities. Thomas Sowell (2019)   Discrimination and econo

+See More

Platform enterprises leverage network effects, scale economies, and information cascades to boost exponential user growth.

Fiona Sydney

2020-05-28 15:37:00 Thursday ET

Platform enterprises leverage network effects, scale economies, and information cascades to boost exponential user growth.

Platform enterprises leverage network effects, scale economies, and information cascades to boost exponential business growth. Laure Reillier and Benoit

+See More

Corporate investment management

Charlene Vos

2022-04-15 10:32:00 Friday ET

Corporate investment management

Corporate investment management  This review of corporate investment literature focuses on some recent empirical studies of M&A, capital investm

+See More

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Intuit (U.S. stock symbol: $INTU).

Dan Rochefort

2025-10-12 13:32:00 Sunday ET

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Intuit (U.S. stock symbol: $INTU).

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fund

+See More

The Trump administration mulls over antitrust actions against Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Monica McNeil

2018-11-19 09:38:00 Monday ET

The Trump administration mulls over antitrust actions against Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

The Trump administration mulls over antitrust actions against Amazon, Facebook, and Google. President Trump indicates that the $5 billion fine against Googl

+See More