Now that President Biden has signed legislation forcing the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations, any potential deal raises a big question: How much is the popular video-sharing app worth?

Those asking have some huge—and widely varying—numbers to consider. One suitor has suggested $20 billion as a starting price for the U.S. operations. Executives at TikTok parent ByteDance have previously considered TikTok's global operations to be worth about half of the Chinese company's overall value, which would put it above $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Settling on the exact value will be difficult because the tech industry has never seen a sale like this before, and there are several unknowns…Read Full Article

Two months ago, I wrote a story entitled, “The IPO market is looking very shaky and facing challenges galore.” 

Two months later, the IPO market is still shaky, but there are definite signs of improvement. 

First, the broad market is just off new highs, always a good sign for IPOs. 

Second, three $100 million IPOs have filed to go public in the past week, including Viking (the cruise line operator) and Rubrik, a data management platform…Read Full Article 

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The VC vets talk transfer restrictions and ROFRs, gaining access with small cheques, Rainmaker’s model and expansion plans, Chad’s favorite trade, and more in Venture Secondaries!

Social media darling Reddit is set to make its debut on Wall Street later this week, but even if its initial public offering has a red-hot pop after it opens, some are holding out for bigger, better unicorns to file their paperwork before declaring that the IPO market is legitimately back.

Reddit isn’t a bellwether, said Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, a brokerage firm that specializes in private company investments. Martin notes that the company faces a lot of competition in social media and that its proposed valuation of $6.4 billion, based on the $34 a share top of its price range, seems like a “stretch”…even though it was valued at $10 billion in a private round of financing a few years ago.

Martin said that $5 billion makes more sense, adding that Reddit is likely to be as cyclical a stock as other midsize social media firms, such as Snapchat and Pinterest.

“It’s good that Reddit is going public. But it’s not the most exciting company. The growth has been more pedestrian lately and it’s an advertising revenue driven firm,” he said...Read Full Article

Reddit's closely watched initial public offering is between four and five times oversubscribed, according to a Reuters report.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Reuters reports that the social-media platform is set to at least reach its target price of $31 to $34 a share. The IPO will price Wednesday, the report said.

Reddit declined to comment, citing the quiet period during which companies are not allowed to publicly comment on their IPOs before they start trading.

In an amended filing last week, Reddit said it plans to offer 22 million shares at a price range of $31 to $34. At the top of the price range, and including potential vested options and restricted stock units, the company's total share count would be 188.7 million shares valued at $6.4 billion. This is significantly below its previous valuation of $10 billion...Read Full Article

Reddit's upcoming IPO will be closely watched by a number of companies eyeing public offerings, according to Greg Martin, co-founder of private securities broker-dealer Rainmaker Securities.

"I do think it's noteworthy, people are going to be paying attention to it," he told MarketWatch, adding that it could open the IPO door "a little bit more." Rainmaker Securities does not hold a position in Reddit.

Geopolitical uncertainty, interest-rate hikes and bank failures hindered a hoped-for IPO market rebound in 2023. As a result, a number of companies are eyeing IPO opportunities in 2024. "There's a backlog of companies in the tech sector," said Martin. "There's a significant dust-off of S-1s."…Read Full Article

Reddit disclosed further details of what is set to be one of the year’s biggest IPOs, with the company and some existing shareholders seeking to raise as much as $748 million. Rainmaker Securities co-founder and Managing Director Greg Martin joins Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

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In Reddit's S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the social media platform revealed plans to raise $748 million and seeks an estimated valuation of $6.4 billion for its highly anticipated IPO debut. Rainmaker Securities Managing Director Greg Martin joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss Reddit's recent moves to avoid becoming just another meme stock…Watch Video

As Reddit prepares to go public, its executives have concocted a plan to stay in their most important stakeholders’ good graces.

In early 2021, stocks began behaving strangely. Retail investors, coordinating on internet platforms, decided to band together and coordinate their stock trades—chiefly, they plotted on Reddit.

On the subreddit WallStreetBets, as well as on its sister channel on the messaging app Discord, investors organized a historic short squeeze of GameStop in early 2021, an effort that bounced the video game retailer’s stock price up 1,700 percent in a matter of weeks and eventually caused the closure of a once-successful hedge fund Melvin Capital…Read Full Article

Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss expectations for Reddit IPO. Martin says investors could be looking at a valuation within US$4-6B range for Reddit. He adds this is a media company, with advertising being its largest source of revenue. He adds the company is trying to differentiate itself from Pinterest and SNAP, which could be a challenge given their model is similar.

Reddit Inc. filed for an initial public offering, revealing the social media platform’s shrinking losses and helping to propel a still-tenuous resurgence in US listings.

The San Francisco-based company, in what is set to be one of the biggest listings of the year, filed Thursday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to move ahead with an IPO, more than two years after first submitting its plan confidentially.

Reddit won’t disclose proposed terms for the IPO, including its valuation in a listing, until a later filing. The company has been advised to consider a valuation of at least $5 billion in an IPO and could begin marketing the shares as soon as March, Bloomberg News has reported.

Reddit, founded in 2005, averaged 73.1 million daily active unique visitors in the fourth quarter, according to the filing. It became an icon of the so-called meme-stock era after a forum on the site, WallStreetBets, jolted the stock market.

The company reported a net loss of $90.8 million on revenue of $804 million in 2023, compared with a net loss of $158.6 million on revenue of $666.7 million a year earlier…Read Full Article

Social media company Reddit has been toying with the idea of going public for half a decade. Now it’s finally going through with those plans—and the timing is risky.

The IPO market has effectively been at a standstill for the last two years, after public investors began to shy away from unprofitable businesses, and shares of public companies fell to earth after the pandemic-induced tech boom in 2020 and 2021.
 
Some companies that have tested the waters in the last few months have struggled to maintain traction. Instacart, for example, closed at less than $30 per share on Thursday, down 11% from its public debut in September.
 
Now Reddit is delving into the noise—and it could face even more trouble than some of its peers before it because of one key line item in its financials: It’s not profitable. Reddit, which revealed a net loss of $90.8 million in its IPO filing on Thursday, is more akin to the swaths of high-growth, money-losing companies that went public two years ago. It has cumulatively lost more than $716 million since 2014, and has yet to post a net profit, filings show. Revenue at Reddit is climbing—up to $804 million in 2023 from $666.7 million the year prior. But losses are a tough sell for public investors these days.
 
“They’re losing a good amount of money,” says Greg Martin, managing director of Rainmaker Securities, a secondaries brokerage where investors can buy shares of private companies before they go public. “Sophisticated investors won’t be excited about buying,” he wrote in an email…Read Full Article

An Alphabet Inc. earnings flop in the grip of an historically narrow stock rally with echoes of the dot-com bubble. Jerome Powell downplaying hopes of early interest-rate cuts. A fresh regional bank rout.

Yet for the Wall Street drama this week, the bull market powered on thanks to soothing economic data and strong reports from Meta Platforms and Amazon.com. The twist: The easy buy-and-hold trade on the Magnificent Seven is now on shakier ground.

It was an anxious stretch for bulls by any measure. The 13th gain in 14 weeks for the Nasdaq 100 masked wildly divergent reactions in stocks whose soaring valuations are threatening what has long been a monolithic trade in tech heavyweights. Among the five tech giants that announced quarterly results this week, two of them saw their stocks go up post earnings while three were down, breaking the almost lockstep rally that’s been fueled by optimism over artificial intelligence since early 2023.….Read Full Article

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Rainmaker Securities Managing Director and Co-Founder Greg Martin joins Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde to discuss the current IPO landscape and the road ahead for Reddit. He speaks on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Reddit has been advised to target a valuation of at least $5 billion in a potential initial public offering (IPO) this spring, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The social media network – which hosts forums for users to share, discuss and vote on content – has been holding meetings with potential IPO investors and advisers have suggested the company should target roughly $5 billion as its valuation, per Bloomberg’s report citing people familiar with the discussions.

Bloomberg noted that private trades of Reddit’s unlisted shares have been traded at a valuation below $5 billion – with would-be buyers on Rainmaker Securities’ platform submitting bids with a value in the $4.5 billion to $4.8 billion range and Forge Global Holdings’ database indicating a $4.8 billion valuation…Read Full Article

Reddit Inc. is weighing feedback from early meetings with potential investors in its initial public offering that it should consider a valuation of at least $5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, even as it is estimated below that figure in the volatile market for shares of private companies.

The San Francisco-based social media company and its advisers are targeting a valuation in the mid-single-digit billions, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. The ultimate figure will depend on the IPO market’s nascent recovery, the people said. Reddit is considering a possible listing as soon as March, the people said.

Separately, private trades of Reddit’s unlisted shares have valued the company below $5 billion. Potential buyers on Rainmaker Securities’ platform have submitted bids indicating a value of between $4.5 billion and $4.8 billion…Read Full Article

The current venture market is fraught: investors have funnelled billions of euros into startups in recent years, but amid a drought of exits, VCs aren’t cashing out on their investments — and neither are their own investors.

It’s a conundrum that more firms are dealing with now, and one solution VCs have at their disposal is secondaries — where investors, founders and employees sell equity in private companies. Today London-based investment firm Launchbay Capital is announcing that it’s raised $25m, of a target $100m fund, to try and take advantage of what many in the VC industry think could become a booming secondaries market in 2024…Read Full Article

Greg Martin, co-founder and managing director of Rainmaker Securities, joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow to discuss the OpenAI and SpaceX tender offers and demand for these and other private stocks on the Rainmaker Securities platform. He speaks on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

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We’ve seen the bottom of private market valuations, notes Glen Anderson. He discusses the 2024 IPO outlook. He talks about how 2H23 saw a substantial increase in demand for everything we trade. He mentions that investors are starting to put risk on again and the private market appetite generally indicates the appetite for IPOs will be strong. He looks at companies that could be a catalyst for the 2024 IPO market. He then goes over the role of A.I. hype in the 2024 IPO outlook. Tune in to find out more about the stock market today.

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Despite a dismal 2023 for IPOs, Rainmaker Securities Managing Director Greg Martin sees a potential ""greenlight situation"" for a rebound in 2024. He notes positive drivers like a dovish Federal Reserve, falling yields, and economic stabilization are making conditions ""quite good"" for public debuts.

While risks like geopolitics remain, Martin expects ""a major 2024 if these conditions hold up."" He notes poor post-IPO performance for 2023 deterred further issuance, but a strong showing by some anticipated offerings could kickstart a ""jetstream"" next year.

In Martin's view, companies demonstrating ""stable, but profitable growth"" will attract investors focused on profitability rather than growth alone.