Social media platform Reddit, whose message boards became the focus of meme stock trading in 2021, is tapping Wall Street banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group ahead of their IPO, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. .
Reddit had confidentially filed for an IPO in December and is aiming for a valuation of more than $15 billion (approximately Rs. 1,11,436 crore) at the time of its IPO. It was valued at $10 billion (approximately Rs. 74,231 crore) in a private fundraising round led by Fidelity Management in August.
A second source familiar with the matter said JPMorgan Chase is also one of the top insurers on the deal.
Goldman Sachs and Reddit did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase declined to comment.
Founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Reddit has over 50 million daily active users and over 100,000 communities.
The message boards, particularly the WallStreetBets thread, were at the heart of a battle between small traders and large hedge funds and had helped make big gains in highly shorted stocks of companies like GameStop and AMC as the term meme stocks became popular. .
Globally, IPOs raised a record $594 billion (approximately Rs. 44,10,667 crore) in 2021, joining the stock market rallies with technology and healthcare being the biggest sectors boosting IPO volumes.
According to Refinitiv, there were 426 technology IPOs and 332 healthcare deals last year, representing nearly 42 percent of companies’ global IPO revenue.
Bloomberg News first announced the news.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
Check out the latest from the Consumer Electronics Show on Gadgets 360, at our CES 2022 hub.