He sold about 500,000 shares. He owned, apparently, 3.3% of the 17.06 million total shares of the company, meaning he had a little over 562,000 shares. He sold almost all of his shares. That doesn’t exactly exude confidence in future growth, IMO.
Sounds like something a greedy little pigboy would do
I thought they paid him like $200M last year? How does that work out with only half a million shares?
It doesn’t, he had like 4.6 million shares before the ipo. The 500,000 number sold is just his class A shares. He’ll still have 4.1 million shares of class b stock after this it looks like. The class b stock has ten votes compared to one vote for class a stock for any shareholder votes I believe. So selling only his class a shares won’t change the percent voting control of the company he has by much. The person you’re replying to is confused about how many total shares he has. I don’t think the class b shares are being openly traded though, I think the ipo is just offering class a shares, which is what’s causing the confusion here. He sold almost all of his class a shares, but still has plenty of class b.
If the people in this thread could read this and understand it that would be amazing. This isn’t some gotcha moment…
On the other hand, he already cashed out once and was wrong, so…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Huffman
The site’s audience grew rapidly in its first few months, and by August 2005, Huffman noticed their habitual user-base had grown so large that he no longer needed to fill the front page with content himself.[11][14][15] Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast on October 31, 2006, for a reported $10 million to $20 million.[3][16] Huffman remained with Reddit until 2009, when he left his role as acting CEO.[17]
Huffman spent several months backpacking in Costa Rica[18] before co-creating the travel website Hipmunk with Adam Goldstein, an author and software developer, in 2010. Funded by Y Combinator,[19][20] Hipmunk launched in August 2010[21] with Huffman serving as CTO.[22] In 2011, Inc. named Huffman to its 30 under 30 list.[22]
In 2014, Huffman said that his decision to sell Reddit had been a mistake, and that the site’s growth had exceeded his expectations.[23] On July 10, 2015, Reddit hired Huffman as CEO following the resignation of Ellen Pao[24] and during a particularly difficult time for the company.[25] Upon rejoining the company, Huffman’s top goals included launching Reddit’s iOS and Android apps, fixing Reddit’s mobile website, and creating A/B testing infrastructure.[3]
Since returning to Reddit, Huffman instituted a number of technological changes including an updated mobile site and stronger infrastructure, as well as new content guidelines.
I don’t think that he’s had a whole lot of faith in Reddit as a business since early-on.
Huffman’s top goals included launching Reddit’s iOS and Android apps
Mission accomplished! Those undeniably shitty apps definitely were launched.
I’ve never used them, but IIRC they acquired some third-party client and then just modified them. “Blue Alien” or something like that?
googles
“Alien Blue”, at least for the official iOS app.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Blue
I dunno what the history of the Android app is.
That being said, they’re responsible for what they acquire, just saying that a lot of that might not be developed in-house.
They acquired Alien Blue, but what they put out under “Reddit” was not Alien Blue in the least bit. They basically bought it to kill it. I had Alien Blue. :(
Anyone who bought that shit deserves to lose all their money.
Wow it’s almost like we called it
I won’t lie, I do regret not making a quick buck off of it. I could have gotten in at 30-something and out at 40-something easily enough.
I just couldn’t stomach the thought of buying RDDT. I also guessed Pigboy Spez and his pals would leave us suckers holding the bag.
Turns out some brave peasants did make money on the IPO. Just not this peasant.
I suspect the stock will spiral down from here.
Meh. Hindsight and all that.
People said it about Apple, Amazon, and Bitcoin. Can’t know which ones that will happen with and which won’t.
There are no guarantees an IPO will pop, even a buzzy one. Uber debuted at the low end of their estimate and trended downward, for ex, and didn’t recover for over a year.
My instinct was that there would be irrational exuberance for the stupid stock. And ignored it.
The market is often pure speculation and gambling until the sobriety kicks in.
Anyway, I missed out on this one because of my caution and contempt for reddit. No point crying over it.
I didn’t want to tie my user name to my real life details for that payoff.
Same here! I gave them a fake email and didn’t want to do myself to them. Glad you brought that up.
Gee it is almost like completely alienating your user base is a bad for profits?
deleted by creator
From my experience, these people have lots more shares than what they sold. And aside from spez, it’s not really that much.
If I am not mistaken, these sales are also planned and public knowledge before the sales are executed. The key shareholders should know executives are going to dump stock.
But yes. This seems normal to me.
One thing of note is the average price spez sold for. That is actually below market value so it’s likely that his sale price was fixed, which I believe is a thing.
Yes. Insiders with that high a fraction of ownership exercise the ability to sell shares at a predetermined percentage value of a full priced share. Usually pegged to the closing price at the beginning or end of a quarter, whichever is lower.
Some of these people have been with Reddit since the very beginning and this is basically their first practical chance to sell any of their shares - I wouldn’t read too much into their activity this week. For a company valued at $9B, having the founder & other executives only sell $41M in the week of the IPO if anything feels like the opposite of dumping.
I was thinking short sellers looking to profit would buy up as much as they could to make a bubble then short sell once the market started going sideways, and this chart seems to accurately reflect that:
deleted by creator
They dumped $50 million the same week as the IPO? Talk about confidence in your company!
Also, they didn’t have any lockout period? That’s also bullshit. I worked for a company during an IPO some years back and nobody could sell their shares for something like a year!
Wait, there was no (or a very short) lockup period!!!
His 500,000 class a shares were a part of the ipo offering, so they were directly sold with the ipo. He still has 4.1 million class b shares which have greater voting rights than class a shares. So the people in this thread saying he’s sold all of his stock aren’t correct, though he did sell all of his class a shares that are being traded in the public market for the ipo. It’s all in sec filings as part of the ipo. You can see here who sold as part of the ipo and how much, and where all the ipo shares are coming from. Some were created to raise money for the company, others were already existing shares being sold by those who already held shares before the ipo. They wouldn’t be able to sell after the market actually opened, that’s where lockup periods come in, and it’s 180 days in this case. The sale price of these shares was negotiated as part of the ipo before it was trading on the exchange. Now any still held are locked up for that period.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I’m not an expert, I could be wrong or misreading it. The wording isn’t straight forward. This is the section that mentions it:
In connection with this offering, we and all of our directors and executive officers, the selling stockholders, and certain other record holders that together represent approximately 82% of our outstanding Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock are subject to lock-up agreements with the underwriters agreeing that, subject to certain exceptions, without the prior written consent of Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, on behalf of the underwriters, we and they will not, in accordance with the terms of such agreements during the period ending on the opening of trading on the earlier of (i) the third trading day immediately following our public release of earnings for the quarter ending June 30, 2024 and (ii) 180 days after the date of this prospectus (such period, the “Lock-up Period”): (1)offer, pledge, sell, contract to sell, sell any option or contract to purchase, purchase any option or contract to sell, grant any option, right, or warrant to purchase, lend, make any short sale, or otherwise transfer or dispose of, directly or indirectly, any shares of our Class A common stock and securities directly or indirectly convertible into or exchangeable or exercisable for our Class A common stock; (2)enter into any swap, hedging transaction, or other arrangement that transfers to another, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of ownership of our Class A common stock, whether any such transaction described above is to be settled by delivery of our Class A common stock or such other securities, in cash or otherwise; (3)publicly disclose the intention to take any of the actions restricted by clause (1) or (2) above; or (4)make any demand for, or exercise any right with respect to, the registration of any shares of our Class A common stock or any security convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our Class A common stock.
If you control f to “lock-up” there’s more context too.
deleted by creator
I’ve given up on buying stocks for individual companies. I’d rather just stuff it in an index fund and pretend it doesn’t exist for 10 years.
the average person usually doesnt beat the average index fund, so if you arent keen at day trading, dont do it.
What if I’m not average. I bet I can lose all my money. Take that index funds.
How do I buy puts on you
Aaron Swartz would loathe what Reddit has become.
Hot take is I don’t think anyone should care about Aaron Swartz. He didn’t do anything for Reddit in the merger and left without doing anything for Reddit so who cares. He then died being a martyr for a cause barely anyone cares about and his death didn’t inspire any change to education publication/copyright. Nobody should care.
Edit: you can downvote me all you want but I would like someone to comment on 1 thing Aaron contributed to Reddit. Why should anyone remember his name other than ‘but he killed himself for the cause bro’.
I think you have to convince everyone why it is reasonable that you are so angry and hateful towards someone you never knew.
I wasn’t angry or hateful though? If anything I’m irritated of all the praise for not inherently doing anything.
Literally I’ve seen two to three references of him after 17 years on reddit. You’re exaggerating how much people talk about him.
He was also a libertarian techbro who thought ‘child pornography isn’t necessarily abuse’
In the US, it is illegal to possess or distribute child pornography, apparently because doing so will encourage people to sexually abuse children.
This is absurd logic. Child pornography is not necessarily abuse. Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won’t make the abuse go away. We don’t arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090719140727/http://bits.are.notabug.com/
You should probably use quote formatting to indicate that that’s a quote, because right now it looks like your words
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman sold 500,000 shares on Monday at an average $32.30
On Monday the 25th, Reddit shares were trading between ~$49 and ~$59. The stock has not yet dropped below the initial price of $34.
Can somebody explain why these shares may have been sold below market value?
There’s a bunch of trades which happen instantly when you IPO. I don’t know exactly how it works, but I think that when my company went public the pool offered in the IPO included stock from priority shareholders. So I’m guessing he effectively sold them to reddit at slightly below initial offer value for them to release to the public as part of the IPO. This way he doesn’t tank the stock by selling off 500k shares on the stock exchange.
He borrowed money on Reddit’s books. Reddit used that money as part of the IPO. Then he sold his shares, and got his hands on the now clean cash money. Reddit is left with the debt? Is this about right?
Spez will probably quit within a year or two.
I feel like he is Ellen Pao-ing himself now.
His purpose is to implement all of the unpopular shit, take off with his golden parachute, and then a new CEO steps up promising better mod tools and maybe better performance in the mobile app. They’ll make the users think Reddit is headed in a positive new direction with Huffman gone, even though all of it has been preordained and effectively nothing will change, but at least the users will have their bread and circuses.
deleted by creator
