Reddit Opens Up 38%, as Shares Begin Trading
The New York Times
The social media company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange was one of the first major tech initial public offerings of the year.
Reddit shares opened up about 38 percent on Thursday in their first day of trading, in a sign of investor eagerness that set the stage for more tech companies to reach the stock market this year.
Shares of the social media company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $47 after pricing at $34 on Wednesday in its initial public offering and continued to rise. The pop put Reddit’s market capitalization around $9.2 billion, less than the $10 billion it was valued at in the private markets three years ago.
The listing is a milestone on a long road for Reddit, which was founded in 2005 in San Francisco. The site is best known for its message boards, where users can congregate on forums known as subreddits to research and discuss everything from parenting to power washing to Labrador retrievers. Over the years, the company struggled through many of the issues facing the largest social media firms, such as how to moderate speech and make money.
“The process of becoming a public company has made us so much better,” Steve Huffman, Reddit’s chief executive, said in an interview on Thursday morning. “We’re shipping better products, faster.”
Reddit’s performance signaled that the public markets have an appetite for more tech offerings after public listings fizzled amid rising interest rates and economic uncertainty. Just over 100 companies went public in the United States last year, roughly a quarter of the number of companies that went public in 2021, according to data compiled by Renaissance Capital, which manages I.P.O.-focused exchange traded funds.
