Reddit shares rise 7%, hit record as Raymond James raises price target
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after ringing a bell on the floor setting the share price at $47 in its initial public offering (IPO) on March 21, 2024 in New York City.
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Reddit shares rose over 7% to a record high Tuesday after Raymond James analysts raised their price target and reiterated their “strong buy” rating for the social media platform.
The company’s shares reached $191 during midday trading, topping a previous high of $182 on Jan. 6. Reddit shares passed $100 for the first time in late October after the company reported third-quarter financial results that beat Wall Street expectations.
Raymond James analysts said in a Tuesday note that they would raise their Reddit price target to $200 from $150, largely due to their “conviction” that Reddit can expand its business internationally.
The company is planning to attract more users outside its core U.S. market as it looks to expand its advertising business, Reddit Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong told CNBC in November. Reddit’s third-quarter sales, which are predominantly online advertising, rose 68% year-over-year to $348.4 million.
Reddit’s increase use of artificial intelligence to automatically translate its site text to different languages like Portuguese, French, Spanish, Philippines and German “should help improve local search rankings for Reddit and provide durable hypergrowth,” the Raymond James analysts wrote.
The company’s AI-translation efforts are key to its international expansion, Wong told CNBC in November. Reddit’s fastest-growing regions in regards to users include the U.K., the Philippines, India and Brazil, she said.
“That points to a lot of our future user growth opportunity definitely outside of the U.S. and local language,” Wong said. “Every language is an opportunity for another Reddit.”
The company also continues to be one of the top five most searched websites, the Raymond James analysts said, citing the SimilarWeb research firm. Reddit’s “authentic and uniquely moderated (community system) content” will help the company stay on top of search results, ultimately resulting in more Reddit users creating accounts, the analysts wrote.
Reddit makes more money on logged-in users who have accounts rather than logged-out users, who have been visiting the platform more often over the past year due to internal site improvements and a previous Google search algorithm change that favored “authentic” content.
The Raymond James analysts noted in a section on “risks” that Reddit could suffer from “unfavorable Google search algo updates” that push the site lower in search results and slower rates in converting those logged-out users into the more financially lucrative logged-in counterparts.
Watch: Steven Mnuchin on TikTok: We’d be very interested in investing the business
Oracle CEO Safra Catz speaks at the FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach, Florida, on Feb. 20, 2025.
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Oracle shares jumped more than 5% after a recent filing showed a cloud deal that would add over $30 billion annually.
CEO Safra Catz is slated to share the deal news at a company meeting Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The revenues are expected to start hitting in the 2028 fiscal year.
“Oracle is off to a strong start in FY26,” Catz is expected to say, according to the filing. “Our MultiCloud database revenue continues to grow at over 100%, and we signed multiple large cloud services agreements including one that is expected to contribute more than $30 billion in annual revenue starting in FY28.”
The deals revealed Monday by Catz will not affect the company’s 2026 guidance, according to the filing.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 4 that he would again postpone enforcement of a law banning TikTok unless its Chinese owner ByteDance divests from the platform.
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U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview aired on Sunday that he has a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy TikTok, whose identities he can reveal in about two weeks.
Trump added that the deal will probably need Beijing’s approval to move forward, but said “I think President Xi will probably do it,” in reference to China’s leader Xi Jinping.
The president made the off-the-cuff remarks while discussing the possibility of another pause of his “reciprocal” tariffs on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”
Tiktok’s fate in the U.S. has been in doubt since the approval of a law in 2024 that sought to ban the platform unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested from it. The legislation was driven by concerns that the Chinese government could manipulate content and access sensitive data from American users.
Earlier this month, Trump extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest from the platform’s U.S. business. It was his third extension since the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok law just a few days before Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January. The new deadline is Sept. 17.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, of PAFACA, had originally been set to take effect on Jan. 19, after which app store operators and internet service providers would be penalized for supporting TikTok.
TikTok went dark in the U.S. ahead of the original deadline, but was restored after Trump provided it with assurances on the extension.
Trump, who credited the app with boosting his support among young voters in the last presidential election, has maintained that he would like to see the platform stay afloat under new ownership.
Potential buyers that have voiced interest in the app include Trump insiders such as Oracle’s Larry Ellison to firms like AppLovin and Perplexity AI.
However, it’s unclear if ByteDance would be willing to sell the company. Any potential divestiture is likely to require approval from the Chinese government.
A deal that would have spun off TikTok’s U.S. operations and allowed ByteDance to retain a minority position had been in the works in April, but was derailed by the announcement of Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, Reuters reported that month.
The president previously floated a proposal for American stakeholders to buy the company and then sell a 50% stake to the U.S. government as part of a joint venture.
Experts have previously told CNBC that any potential deal could face legal challenges in the U.S., depending on whether it complies with PAFACA.
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