On Wednesday, Reddit, the self-styled homepage of the internet, announced it had confidentially filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with the intent of going public. In its release, Reddit did not disclose how many shares would be issued, nor their price.
The company did not disclose the price of its future shares, nor how many it would issue. "The initial public offering is expected to occur after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions," said the company.
No doubt the site is looking to capitalize on the meme stock craze, which took hold on r/WallStreetBets, a subreddit, earlier this year. Members of that forum helped send shares of GameStop (NYSE: GME) and AMC (NYSE: AMC) "to the moon" in a highly publicized episode that baffled institutional investors and talking heads alike.
According to Reddit's CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman, the episode also helped pull in millions of additional new users and ad spending. During the second quarter, in the aftermath of the meme stock craze, the site managed to breach $100 million in revenue for the first time, a 192% increase year over year.
Going by Reddit's latest figures, the site pulls in 50 million daily active users, who split their time across 100,000 separate communities, sharing stories, anecdotes, videos, memes, and so much more.
Reddit said it was valued at $10 billion during its August funding round with Fidelity Investments Inc. The site managed to raise $410 million through that deal, money which it said it would use to help plan its public offering.
At the time, Huffman said, "We are still planning on going public, but we don't have a firm timeline there yet," adding that, "All good companies should go public when they can."
Beyond these not-so-subtle hints, in March Reddit also recruited its first-ever CFO, Drew Vollero, to help the company get its financials up to snuff ahead of its public offering.
Nevertheless, Reddit could have a hard time making its case to potential investors. The most middling of all social media platforms, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) has 200 million daily active users while Reddit has but 50. Many also see text-based forums, like those that make up the majority of Reddit, as something from a bygone era.
At the same time, two-thirds of online ad spending goes to the likes of Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), a fact that could limit Reddit's potential earnings.
Huffman himself has acknowledged that Reddit has "grown up in the shadow" of Facebook and Google, and that his company has had to fight for "pretty much every dollar we make."
However, Reddit is not bereft of growth opportunities. The company acquired Dubsmash, a video-sharing platform, with the express intention of competing with TikTok.
In remarks, Huffman has cast video-sharing as being an integral part of Reddit's next chapter. At the same time, Reddit also has demographics on its side. An April survey conducted by Pew Research found that a quarter of Reddit's users earned more than $75,000, results which might motivate more ad spending on the site.
Nevertheless, nary but a second after Reddit made its announcement, users of WallStreetBets took to their keyboards to express their displeasure, with many expecting the site's freewheeling culture to end after the company goes public.
"Today, we're users. Tomorrow we're products," said one user. "You think you ain't the product already," was the reply.
Other users were more opportunistic, so to speak.
"But wait, if WSB goes full apes*** and we pump the f*** out of Reddit stock. Then we profit off of them profiting off us profiting..."