What will come first: the heat death of the universe or Reddit’s IPO?
It appears the self-professed “front page of the internet” is once again gearing up for a public offering, Bloomberg reports. Back in 2017, the company aimed to go public by 2020, then wound up filing privately to do that in late 2021, and then just decided to wait 2022 out. Then it set its sights on the latter-half of 2023, and now we’re looking at 2024.
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Granted, going public is no easy task, especially if you have raised a mountain of capital at a valuation of $10 billion. But just in case Reddit fails to do an IPO yet again, we have other names on hand.
Shein is also considering a public offering in the United States next year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The fast-fashion company best known for its low-priced apparel was profitable in 2022, but it’s also laboring under a massive valuation.
Many other unicorns are likely going to be watching how these IPOs perform, since they’ll pretty much prove how high private-market valuations translate to the public markets.
Earlier this year, Arm, Klaviyo, and Instacart went public in quick succession, sparking some hope that each IPO would price and trade well and consequently build investor confidence in tech IPOs. Sadly, the companies’ subsequent performance on the markets have failed to engender other IPOs.
If Shein and Reddit can do better than our miniscule tech IPO class of 2023, they could leave the sort of accelerative impact that tech startups so desperately need right now.
There’s some positive vibes to consider, if you’ll allow me a Zoomer cap for a moment. Tata Technologies’ $366 million IPO in India saw $18.74 billion worth of demand. Now, we both know not to put too much stock in IPO oversubscription, but that ratio did cause me to sit up and sputter. That’s a lot of demand.
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