Reddit (RDDT) is set to list on the New York Stock Exchange via an IPO on Thursday. Though the most recent, Reddit's IPO isn't the first social media platform to launch publicly.
Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre takes a trip down memory lane to review how several of the most high-profile social media stocks traded post-IPO, dating back to Meta Platforms' (META) premiere in 2012 when it was still Facebook.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Video Transcript
RACHELLE AKUFFO: Well, as we gear up for Reddit's IPO, we want to take a trip down memory lane at past social media public debuts. Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre joins us with that breakdown. It's been a minute since we've had a pure-play social media company here.
JARED BLIKRE: Yes, it has. And check out this leaderboard. Who's at the very top there? It's not META. It's Facebook, way back in the day, listing on May 18, 2012. That was a horrendous black eye for the NASDAQ marketplace because the IPO did not go as planned. Lots of hiccups, and in fact, the company was called Faceplant because of that disastrous IPO for a brief time back in 2012, but investors hopefully forget these things.
Now, Snap is another large one. That's another one that came to market 2017. Compared to Facebook, it was quite a bit smaller. Facebook raised 16 billion or sold 16 billion. Snap only sold about four billion. And by the way, these are not the valuation numbers. Just how much they sold.
But then you go down the list, and the other players admittedly quite a bit smaller here, and we didn't even put all of them on the screen. But for what it's worth, Bumble coming to market in February of 2021 and Pinterest in 2019 before the pandemic took hold. But I thought it'd be interesting to chart some of the price action here and just to go back to some of the key features of the offering.
One of the last thing that Ines said was very key here, that there's a bunch of shares that have been allocated to users here. Potential Redditors, 1.76 million of those shares that could come into the market and be sold at any time. They would not be subject to a lock-up agreement. So, as Ines said, could provide some extra volatility.
But I thought it'd be interesting. You know, you take a look at the biggest-- at the biggest name here. Here is META. Let's go to a max chart. Let's not forget, and you can't even see it here, but the stock was down 60% in the months after its IPO, and it took a year for it to get back in the green above that initial price. There's never a hurry to get into these IPOs.
RACHELLE AKUFFO: Indeed. I appreciate you breaking that down for us, our very own Jared Blikre.
