By Yuvraj Malik and Zaheer Kachwala
(Reuters) – Social media platform Reddit’s market debut on Thursday ended a more than two year-long wait but shifts the focus to how it will compare with the other publicly listed peers.
Despite its cult-like status, the company has failed to replicate the success of Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Elon Musk’s X.
Here’s how the 19-year-old company compares with the larger social media companies:
REVENUE
With just more than $800 million in annual revenue, Reddit is much smaller than peers. Most of the company’s revenue comes from ads as its communities of users post and discuss everything from history to stocks and AI, making it a valuable platform for some advertisers.
Reddit recently struck a deal with Alphabet’s Google unit to license its data for training large language models — the technology behind generative AI applications like Gemini.
VALUATION, IPO FUNDS RAISED
Reddit’s IPO raised $748 million after it was priced at the top end of the $31 to $34 range, valuing the company at $6.4 billion.
That said, Reddit’s IPO valuation is less than half of what X, then Twitter, and about one-fourth of what Snap had at their respective IPOs. Facebook, rebranded as Meta in 2021, was valued at more than $100 billion in its IPO in 2012 in the biggest listing for a social media firm. Meta, also home to Instagram and WhatsApp, counts nearly half the world’s population among its users.
USER NUMBERS
As a niche platform, Reddit caters to over 70 million daily active users, far lower than peers. The platform has more than 100,000 online forums.
Still, Reddit has some advantages. It has a relatively lower expenses profile and strong growth rates for its ads business.
Brokerage Bernstein said Reddit’s revenue to full-time employees ratio is 50% lower than both Snapchat and Pinterest, and 80% lower than Meta, while the 25% revenue growth is “up near Meta and Amazon ads levels.”
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik and Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
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