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Roblox toys are on display at a toy fair in London.
Leon Neal / Getty Images
The New York Stock Exchange said late Tuesday that the reference price for Roblox, which will be announced tomorrow, is $ 45 per share.
With approximately 652 million outstanding shares, the reference price indicates that Roblox’s market capitalization could reach as much as $ 29.3 billion.
Roblox will trade on the NYSE on Wednesday under the symbol RBLX. About 199 million Roblox shares will go on the market, but unlike in a traditional stock exchange, the company does not raise new capital via the offer. Instead, holders will sell shares they already own.
The $ 45 reference price does not mean that Roblox shares will start trading. According to a person familiar with the situation, it is rather meant as a guide that informs the public about recent private trading activities.
Direct offers are not new, but have been getting attention lately. Roblox will be the fifth company to be used in this way.
Palantir Technologies (ticker: PLTR), Asana (ASAN), Slack Technologies (WORK) and Spotify Technology (SPOT) all used direct listings to make their stock market debut. Companies usually do not raise capital via direct listings, although the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule change by the NYSE in December that would make this possible for a company.
Roblox will not receive any proceeds from shareholders selling their shares.
Goldman Sachs,
Morgan Stanley,
and
Bank of America
advises Roblox about the deal.
When Spotify was published on the NYSE in 2018, the reference price was the level of the last private secondary industries. In Slack’s 2019 listing, the reference point was thoroughly informed by the volume-weighted average price of the recent secondary trading activity, but it was not the exact average, the person said.
Contrary to the price range set by the underwriters of a traditional IPO – usually a reasonable indication of the offer price – the reference price is not particularly useful as a measure of where a directly listed stock will trade.
Both Palantir and Asana saw the light of day in September with direct offers. Palantir’s reference price was $ 7.25, but the stock opened at $ 10 on September 30, peaking at $ 11.42 and closing at $ 9.50. While Asana’s reference price was $ 21, it opened at $ 27, it reached $ 29.96 and ended at $ 28.80.
Roblox was founded in 2004 and offers kid-friendly games that focus on digital characters that look like Lego blocks. An average of 37.1 million people come to Roblox every day to play games.
Roblox is not profitable. Losses increased to $ 253.3 million for 2020, compared to $ 71 million in 2019. Revenue rose nearly 82% to $ 923.9 million. The prospectus said David Baszucki, co-founder, president and CEO of Roblox, has 70.1% of the total voting power.
Write to Luisa Beltran at [email protected]