Spotify’s opening number seemed to be music to the market’s ears…at least at first.
The streaming company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday afternoon at more than $165 a pop, pegging its valuation at roughly $29.5 billion.
Over the course of the day, though, that price slipped to about $149, down about 12 percent from the highs of the day, but still well above the $132 a share reference price.
Spotify’s unconventional choice of a direct listing, instead of a traditional IPO, had investors and experts bracing for a roller-coaster ride on Tuesday.
“I thought we were going to see a lot of spikes up and down and up and down,” said Dan Primack, business reporter at Axios. But “it hasn’t been all over the place.”
This smoother-than-expected listing raises the question of whether more companies will follow in Spotify’s footsteps in the future.
“It’s not the right path for all,” Stacey Cunningham, COO of the New York Stock Exchange, told Cheddar before the stock started trading. “There are some unique factors for [Spotify].
“They don’t need to raise capital, so going through the IPO process isn’t something that was important to them.”
Spotify was much more interested in “providing that liquidity event for their shareholders...to have a currency...to do additional M&A deals going forward,” explained Cunningham.
So what’s in store for Spotify’s future?
Fam Mirza, one of the company’s earlier investors, told Cheddar he wouldn’t sell his shares in the listing, because he has faith in where the company is headed.
“They’re so amazing at entering new markets...They can still scale it, and then they get to those bottom line revenues.”
Mirza also doesn’t consider Apple, even as it gains ground in the space, as a real threat. After all, he pointed out, the tech giant has had plenty of opportunity to overtake it.
“Everybody has an iPhone. So as soon as Apple launched Apple Music...why hasn’t every single person who has an iPhone signed on to Apple Music?”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/spotifys-unique-relationship-with-wall-street).
Firefly is a car-top digital smart screen that benefits ridesharing drivers by giving them a new source of income ー and helps their home cities by providing them with new streams of data, the company's CEO told Cheddar.
"We placed digital smart screens on top of taxi and rideshare cars, and thereby we serve location and time-targeted outdoor advertisements, at the same time our smart screen generates a lot of smart screen data which we share back with municipalities and cities," said Firefly's co-founder and CEO Kaan Gunay.
Social media has helped fuel massive opportunity in the travel industry, but with opportunity, comes cutthroat competition, Trivago CEO Rolf Schrömgens said Wednesday. "People are really traveling in general more. They want to experience stuff, they don't want to buy stuff anymore," Schrömgens told Cheddar.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Feb, 6, 2019.
Abra, a five-year-old crypto company that has historically been focused on remittances, is starting to look like a fintech app itself; it will soon give users the ability to use their bitcoin to invest in traditional assets “like Apple, Amazon, gold and the S&P 500," according to a customer email it sent late Tuesday.
Amazon may have met the David to its Goliath in the epic battle for Long Island City ー provided that Gov. Cuomo doesn't stand in his way. State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents New York's 12th district, including Amazon's planned Long Island City outpost, said the tech giant's plan ー promising 25,000 jobs in exchange for billions in city funds ー doesn't even merit negotiation.
Shares of Disney jumped after the bell on Tuesday, boosted by revenue growth in its television and parks divisions. The report was good news for investors looking to gauge Disney’s strength as it deepens its direct-to-consumer offerings in an effort to compete against rivals like Netflix and Apple.
Shares of embattled social media company Snap soared more than 16 percent in extended trading on Tuesday, after beating Wall Street's expectations for its fourth-quarter financial results and reporting relatively stable daily active users year-over-year. Wedbush's Dan Ives said the results showed signs of progress.
Viacom CFO Wade Davis says the company's recent acquisition of Pluto TV gives it a competitive advantage as it vies for consumers in a saturated market."The market for video products has been segmenting for some time now," Davis told Cheddar Tuesday. "With this segmentation, consumers have become a lot more value conscious, and we think that that underscores the opportunity in what we talk about as the free price point."
Blue Hexagon, a company focused on protecting companies from cyberthreats, has raised $31 million from Benchmark Capital and Altimeter Capital, which called the startup's deep learning technology a "game changer" in cybersecurity.
Google parent company Alphabet slipped in extended trading on Monday after the FAANG stock beat Wall Street expectations on its top and bottom lines, but cost-per-click ー or the amount Google charges advertisers when an ad gets clicked ー fell 29 percent on Google properties.
