Social media company Reddit filed its IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday after a yearslong run-up. The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RDDT.”
Reddit said it had $804 million in annual sales for 2023, up 20% from the $666.7 million it brought in the previous year, according to the filing. The social networking company’s core business is reliant on online advertising sales stemming from its website and mobile app.
The company said it has incurred net losses since its inception. It reported a net loss of $90.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2023, compared to a net loss of $158.6 million the year prior.
As of the fourth quarter of 2023, Reddit said that its U.S. average revenue per user, or ARPU, was $5.51, which was down from $5.92 from the previous year. The company’s ARPU was $3.42, which was a 2% year-over-year decline from $3.49.
Reddit said that by 2027, the company estimates that its “total addressable market globally from advertising, excluding China and Russia, to be $1.4 trillion.” Currently, Reddit said that advertising market is $1.0 trillion, sans China and Russia.
The company said it is building its “search capabilities,” and that it can “more fully address the $750 billion opportunity in search advertising that S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates the market to be in 2027.”
Reddit also detailed its plans to use artificial intelligence technologies to improve its ad business and expects “to open additional monetization channels for Reddit by providing our users and creators with the requisite tools and incentives to drive continued creation, improvements, and commerce.”
It is also “in the early stages” of developing and monetizing a data-licensing business, in which third-parties would be allowed to “access, search, and analyze data on our platform.”
“In January 2024, we entered into certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years,” Reddit said, regarding its data-licensing business. “We expect a minimum of $66.4 million of revenue to be recognized during the year ending December 31, 2024 and the remaining thereafter.”
Reddit said that its non-employed moderators known as Redditors will be able to participate in the company’s initial public offering through its “directed share program.” Because of this, Reddit said that it’s possible for “individual investors, retail or otherwise constituting a larger proportion of the investors participating in this offering than is typical for an initial public offering.”
“These factors could cause volatility in the market price of our Class A common stock,” the company said in the filing, adding that it has three classes of authorized common stock, which are Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock.
“The rights of the holders of Class A common stock, Class B common stock, and Class C common stock are identical, except with respect to voting and conversion rights,” the filing said. “Each share of Class A common stock is entitled to one vote. Each share of Class B common stock is entitled to 10 votes and is convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock. Each share of Class C common stock is entitled to no votes.”
Reddit said it has over 100,000 communities, 73 million average daily active uniques (DAUq) and 267 million average weekly active uniques.
In a section about the company’s risks, Reddit explained how its daily active unique figures “may fluctuate or decrease in one or more markets from time to time due to various factors.”
“For example, although we saw increased growth in our user base during the COVID-19 pandemic, we experienced lower levels of DAUq growth and declining DAUq as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided,” the filing said. “DAUq has also declined in the past in periods following usage peaks surrounding certain worldwide events, such as the onset of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the three months ended March 31, 2022, and cultural trends, including video game releases, such as Elden Ring in the three months ended March 31, 2022, and traffic related to r/wallstreetbets in the three months ended March 31, 2021.”
Its market debut, expected in March, will mark the first major tech initial public offering of the year. It’s the first social media IPO since Pinterestwent public in 2019.
Reddit first filed a confidential draft of its public offering prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2021.
The social media company, founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, has raised about $1.3 billion in funding and has a post valuation of $10 billion, according to deal-tracking service PitchBook.
Publishing giant Condé Nast bought Reddit in 2006 and then spun it out as an independent company in 2011.
Reddit is one of the most-visited websites in the U.S., according to analytics firm Semrush, but it has struggled to build an online advertising business comparable to tech giants like Facebook-parent Meta and Google-parent Alphabet.
It’s also faced challenges with developers and moderators.
In June, several prominent Reddit moderators locked subreddits as part of a blackout to protest the company’s decision to increase the price third-party developers pay to use its application programming interface, or API. At the time, Reddit said the pricing change was necessary because many big tech companies were using data to train large language models.
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(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Vivek Ramaswamy and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
While the stock market broadly fared better on Monday than in the prior two trading days, Apple got hammered once again, losing 3.7%, as concerns mounted that the company will take a major hit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The sell-off brings Apple’s three-day rout to 19%, a downdraft that has wiped out $638 billion in market cap.
Apple is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war, analyst say, due largely to its reliance on China, which is facing 54% tariffs. Although Apple has production in India, Vietnam and Thailand, those countries also face increased tariffs as part of Trump’s sweeping plan.
Among tech’s megacap companies, Apple is having the roughest stretch. On Monday, the only stocks to drop in that group of seven were Apple, Microsoft and Tesla.
The Nasdaq finished almost barely up on Monday after plummeting 10% last week, its worst performance in more than five years.
Analysts say Apple will likely either need to raise prices or eat additional tariff costs when the new duties come into effect. UBS analysts estimated on Monday that Apple’s highest-end iPhone could rise in price by about $350, or around 30%, from its current price of $1,199.
Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or the company could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share. Apple may also be able to rearrange its supply chain so that imports to the U.S. come from other countries with lower tariffs.
A customer checks Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Plus (right) and Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Pro Max (left) series displayed for sale at Master Arts Shop in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Sept. 26, 2024.
Firdous Nazir | Nurphoto | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs could lead Apple to raise the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max by as much as $350 in the U.S., UBS analysts estimated Monday.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max is Apple’s highest-end iPhone on the market, and currently retails for $1,199. UBS is predicting a nearly 30% increase in retail price for units that were manufactured in China.
Apple’s $999 phone, the iPhone 16 Pro, could see a smaller $120 price increase, if the company has it manufactured in India, the UBS analysts wrote.
Shares of Apple have plummeted 20% over the past three trading days, wiping out nearly $640 billion in market cap, on concern that Trump’s tariffs will force the company to raise prices just as consumers are losing buying power.
“Based on the checks we have done at a company level, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the increased cost sharing will be done with suppliers, the extent to which costs can be passed on to end-customers, and the duration of tariffs,” UBS analyst Sundeep Gantori wrote in the note.
Apple, which does the majority of its manufacturing in China, is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war. China has a potential incoming 54% tariff rate — before new increases were proposed Monday. Smaller tariffs were also placed on secondary production locations, such as India, Vietnam and Thailand.
JPMorgan Chase analysts predicted last week that Apple could raise its prices 6% across the world to offset the U.S. tariffs. Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or it could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share.
If Apple were to relocate iPhone production to the U.S. — a move that most supply chain experts say is impossible — Wedbush’s Dan Ives predicts an iPhone could cost $3,500.
Morgan Stanley analysts on Friday said Apple could absorb additional tariff costs of about $34 billion annually. They wrote that although Apple has diversified its production in recent years to additional countries — so-called friendshoring — those countries could also end up with tariffs, reducing Apple’s flexibility.
After last week’s “reciprocal tariff announcement, there becomes very little differentiation in friend shoring vs. manufacturing in China — if the product is not made in the US, it will be subject to a hefty import tariff,” Morgan Stanley wrote.
Last week, the firm estimated that Apple may raise its prices across its product lines in the U.S. by 17% to 18%. Apple could also get exemptions from the U.S. government for its products.
Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen Community, speaks during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, May 3, 2016.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, took to the social network X on Monday to lambaste President Donald Trump’s tariffs, calling them a “structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.” He also said Trump appears to be the “most high tax American President in generations.”
“Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff tax, prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making things,” Kimbal Musk wrote on X, one of the companies in his brother’s extensive portfolio.
The younger Musk owns a restaurant chain called The Kitchen, is a board member at Tesla and a former director at SpaceX and Chipotle. He has also co-founded and invested in other food and tech startups, including Square Roots, an indoor farming company, and Nova Sky Stories, a creator of drone light shows that he bought from Intel.
Elon Musk is a top advisor to Trump, overseeing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an effort to drastically cut federal spending, largely through layoffs, and consolidate or eliminate agencies and regulations. However, his relationship with some key figures in the Trump administration has been showing signs of strain in recent days as the president’s sweeping tariffs have led to a dramatic selloff in stocks, including for Tesla, which is down 42% this year and just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.
Over the weekend, Elon Musk took aim at Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, disparaging his qualifications in a post on X.
“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote, after Navarro told CNN on Saturday that “The market will find a bottom” and that the Dow will “hit 50,000 during Trump’s term.” It’s currently at about 38,200.
Musk also said that Navarro hasn’t built “sh—.” Navarro told CNBC on Monday that Musk is “not a car manufacturer” but rather a “car assembler,” dependent on parts from Japan, China and Taiwan.
Tesla was seeking a more moderate approach to trade and tariffs in a recent letter to the U.S. Trade Representative.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Kimbal Musk this year has contributed funds to the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian Party of Connecticut. In 2024, while his brother became the biggest financial backer and promoter of Trump, Kimbal donated to Unite America PAC, a group that markets itself as a “philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government.”
A representative for Kimbal Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.