In a new SEC filing, Reddit says it’s planning to sell around 22 million shares, priced between $31 to $34, potentially raising around $748 million at the high end of that range.
But the IPO could be volatile given that Reddit will allow its community members to sell their shares immediately, instead of being subject to the usual lock-up agreements that typically prevent investors from selling shares for six months after the IPO.
The move sets up Reddit to become a meme stock — a term coined in reference to the wild GameStop short squeeze of 2021, which was driven by a group of Reddit users on its community r/WallStreetBets.
The users had taken on the hedge funds that had shorted GameStop’s stock by over 100% by working collectively to buy the stock.
By allowing the Reddit community to buy into the IPO, there’s again potential for the stock to be manipulated — this time, possibly in Reddit’s favor — by Redditors’ collective action.
Reddit users wonder if the next big meme stock is Reddit itself Reddit invites power users in on its IPO, but other Redditors are also considering an investmentJeremiah Johnson says he has “an embarrassing amount” of Reddit karma.
They’re also wondering if Reddit could be the next meme stock, which could prove lucrative or disastrous.
Though she wasn’t invited to invest early, she plans to buy stock in Reddit once it officially goes public.
“Reddit is really dependent on power users who moderate the site, and because they’ve given those power users actual power, power users did for a day or two literally make the site unusable,” Johnson said.
Max Spero, a startup founder in his twenties, plans to buy Reddit stock post-IPO because he’s a fan of the platform, which he’s been using for 11 years.
As Reddit finally files to go public, the company wrote in its S-1 filing that “meme stock” schemes on r/WallStreetBets could pose a risk to investors.
The stock was so volatile, jumping more than 600% within days, that trading was halted multiple times.
Retail traders tried to replicate the GameStop saga by investing in other heavily shorted stocks like AMC and Bed, Bath & Beyond, solidifying this phenomenon of trading “meme stocks,” to mixed results.
This is a rare move that would let community members buy stock at the same price as institutional investors upon IPO.
In 2023, Reddit incurred a net loss of $90.8 million, adding to the company’s cumulative deficit of $716.6 million.
When I think about it, it makes sense that TikTok would create its own microtrends. After all, the app is meant to be fun and entertaining, so why not give…
