Reddit went public. Investors are hoping for a repeat of the Facebook scenario

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Reddit, a popular social network that serves as a place for discussion, content sharing and community building, recently went public in the US. Reddit shares went public on the New York Stock Exchange last week Thursday, and it was a successful debut.

Reddit set the issue price of its shares at $34 each. This valued the entire enterprise at approximately 6.4 billion dollars, i.e. at less than 150 billion crowns. The firm and its shareholders sold 22 million shares in an initial public offering (IPO), which raised $748 million.

The shares strengthened by 48 percent on the first day. The stock market newcomer’s shares were in the sights of a large number of investors, including well-known Wall Street lady Cathie Woodová, who manages the ARK Invest fund. She bought less than ten thousand shares.

Sam Altman, one of the leading representatives of the artificial intelligence boom who co-founded OpenAI, appeared among the biggest investors. Altman bought more than $400 million worth of stock, according to CNBC news.

“The company has an above-standard position in the awareness of investors and in the culture of social media. The WallStreetBets group with 15 million members plays a key role. Yet it remains a relatively small loss-making firm whose users, revenue and market capitalization are still a fraction of peers such as Meta, Snap and the now-unlisted X,” said market strategist Ben Laidler of investment platform eToro.

At the same time, Reddit is not alone on the stock exchange, several social networks have already offered their shares to investors in the past. Some companies have already been withdrawn from the public market for various reasons, but a number of them are still actively traded on the floors of stock exchanges.

The American professional network LinkedIn, which essentially functions as an online resume, was the first to make its shares available to the public. The company launched its operations in 2003, and eight years later its shares appeared for the first time on the stock exchange in the United States.

The value of the shares almost doubled on the first day of trading, and the market value of the company exceeded four billion dollars. In 2016, the software giant Microsoft took control of LinkedIn for 26.2 billion dollars (about 627 billion crowns at the time). The company’s shares, which during their time on the market brought investors a return of around 200 percent, were later withdrawn from the stock exchange.

The world’s largest social network, Facebook, which is now owned by Meta Platforms, began trading on the US Nasdaq market in mid-May 2012. The stock first opened the day higher from the subscription price of $38, but eventually returned to this price.

For many investors, the company’s debut on the stock exchange was a big disappointment. They expected the title to add tens of percent of growth right from the start. Instead, however, in the following months came a decline towards a price of $17 per share.

By mid-2013, however, investors had their fill, since then the share price has risen almost continuously until 2021. In 2022, there was a sharp drop of 64 percent, but last year’s growth of 194 percent made up for everything. On Wednesday, one share of billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s company was trading around $500, so the title has strengthened almost fifteenfold since entering the stock exchange.

The American social network Twitter entered the stock exchange in early November 2013. The price of one share of the company founded in 2006 rose from $26 to $44.90 on the first day, valuing the company at $14 billion. In October 2022, American entrepreneur Elon Musk entered the game, buying the company for $44 billion and subsequently delisting.

Last year, Twitter ceased to exist independently and merged with Musk’s newly formed X Corp. In the summer, the logo of the social network also changed, the blue bird was replaced by a white letter X on a black surface, and the network was renamed X.

Founded in 2011 as Snapchat, US-based Snap, which operates the mobile photo and video sharing app Snapchat, went public in 2017 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The premiere was a success, when the shares strengthened from 17 dollars to almost 25 dollars per piece in the first day of trading, and the market value of the company was 24 billion dollars. The shares reached their all-time high of around $83 per piece in September 2021, but then, due to unsatisfactory financial numbers, there was a rapid drop to the current $11.

The stock hasn’t fared well overall during its seven-year run on the stock market, down roughly 60 percent over that time.

The second-youngest social network on the stock exchange after Reddit is a social network for sharing images and videos called Pinterest, which entered the public market in April 2019. The company offered shares to investors at an issue price of $19, and the price jumped above $24 per share on the first day.

The market thus valued this internet board of images and photos at 15.8 billion dollars (about 361 billion crowns at the time). The current share price is around $35.