Last year in December, Slack announced that it is prepping for its IPO in 2019 and had hired Goldman Sachs as its Lead Underwriter. Now, according to the reports from Wall Street Journal, the company following the path of Spotify, has selected the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) instead of the NASDAQ for the direct listing of its shares.
Slack has earned enough value being private, and reportedly, it had $900 million in cash on hand last year. So, similar to Spotify, it is not, specifically, the money for which the company is going public, and hence it has selected the direct listing over the IPO.
Direct listing is a bit different from the IPO, as the companies who file for IPO are looking for more financial support for their growth. In the direct listing, most of the times, the shares are not backed up by any financial institution, and the shareholders like the investors, promoters or the employees can directly sell their shares.
Last year, Spotify also chose NYSE for its direct listing, and now the valuation of the company is $25 billion up. Also, companies like Uber and Pinterest have also selected NYSE for their IPO, this year. Last Friday, Lyft went public on NASDAQ, and reportedly, its price shed over 10 per cent in the morning trading.
The office-messaging platform has been a member of the Unicorn Club for a long time now, and the direct listing of the company will be a financial boost for its investors. The company is still in talks with the Securities and Exchange Commission and has submitted the draft registration statement on Form S-1, last month.
The company, currently, is serving over 10 million daily users across the globe including the 85,000 paid subscribers. It is one of the most valued and successful companies in Silicon Valley, and its direct listing may set a higher bar for the other SaaS companies. For now, Slack has not made any comments on the matter. But, according to the WSJ, the listing may occur in the month of June or July this year.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.