Welcome to the NYSE, SPOT! Music streamer Spotify tunes up its first day of trading

April 03, 2018

 

It’s time to start the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to get things started, because Spotify just took its biggest stage yet: the New York Stock Exchange. Intent on shaking things up from the start, the music streaming service skipped the bell ringing and initial public offering, and instead launched a direct listing on the public markets today.

Shares in the company trade under the ticker symbol “SPOT” and immediately opened at the reference price of $132, which was set by the NYSE and matched by the buy-and-sell orders phoned in by stock brokers.

We’ll be keeping an eye on the markets to see how things shake out today.

Spotify launched 12 years ago as a free service funded by advertising. It now has some 157 million customers, including 72 million paying subscribers. Despite the impressive numbers, Spotify has never made a profit, which makes it hard for investors to determine the value of the firm. Still, experts predict the market will set a value of $20 billion to $25 billion, which is a bargain after you consider all those times you incognito-streamed Carly Rae Jepsen’s entire catalogue.

Update: CNBC reports that after just 45 minutes, Spotify shares were trading at $160.35, up nearly 22 percent from the reference price. As of Tuesday afternoon SPOT was trading at $165.90 per share, giving it an initial market cap of around $29.55 billion.

 

Fast Company

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