Photographer: Gabby Jones / Bloomberg
Photographer: Gabby Jones / Bloomberg
Roblox Corp intends to go public through a direct listing instead of an initial public offering as previously planned.
The online gaming business announced the switch Wednesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report. Roblox also said it raised $ 520 million through a series of H-positions that valued it at $ 29.5 billion, according to a separate statement. The round was led by Altitude capital and Dragoneer Investment Group.
The funding will enable Roblox to go public without having to raise capital in a stock exchange. While the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a proposal from the New York Stock Exchange to enable companies to raise capital in a hybrid type of direct listing, no company has yet tested the model.
Only a handful of companies made direct listings, including Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies Inc. and the music streaming service Spotify Technology SA. None of them raised any new capital in the listing.
Roblox worked with him Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley en JPMorgan Chase & Co., listed on the stock exchange, plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RBLX.
In December, Roblox told its employees that it was delaying its IPO until 2021 to try to improve the process. The postponement occurred after the Dordash Inc. and Airbnb Inc.
Make ‘Improvements’
“As such, we have decided to take this opportunity to work with our advisors to see how we can make such improvements,” CEO David Baszucki said in an email to employees last year.
Read more: Roblox postpones IPO if alleged to weigh its timing
In a direct listing, a company usually does not raise capital as in a stock exchange, and investors do not have to wait until the closing period expires before selling their shares.
Roblox, based in San Mateo, California, has seen its revenue and user base grow as the coronavirus pandemic keeps students at home and in search of entertainment. The company was valued at $ 4 billion in February, led by Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm.
Roblox offers millions of games that are built by users, who then get a share of the related revenue. It says two-thirds of all U.S. children ages 9 to 12 use the platform.
The company had 31 million daily active users during the first nine months of the year, 82% higher than in the same period in 2019, according to the earlier filing with the SEC. The amount of time users spent on the platform more than doubled from last year to 22 billion hours.
The use of most video games has exploded with the coronavirus pandemic keeping millions – including school-age children – at home with time on their hands.
Birthdays, concerts
Roblox has expanded its focus to become a social platform, where users can come not only for gaming, but also for virtual birthday parties and concerts with friends. Amidst school locks, Roblox is also increasingly used to teach everything from coding to physics.
For the nine months ended September 30, Roblox lost $ 203 million in revenue of $ 589 million, compared to a loss of $ 46 million in revenue of $ 350 million for the same period last year, according to the documentation.
The investors of the company include Altos Ventures, First Capital, Index Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and Tiger Global.
(Updates with user statistics in the 11th paragraph. The amount of funding was corrected in a previous version of this story.)