Reddit jumps 70% in highly anticipated public-trading debut

• Reddit stock surged as much 70% as it made its public-trading debut on Thursday.
• The stock was priced at $34 a share at its IPO on Wednesday, the top end of expectations.
• Reddit set aside a portion of shares for some of the site's top users and moderators. 

Shares of Reddit soared as it made its highly anticipated public-trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

The stock climbed as much as 70% to $57.80 shortly after trading began at 1:15 p.m. ET on Thursday. Shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RDDT.

On Wednesday, the stock was priced at $34 a share, raising $748 million near the upper end of the company's target. That valued the social platform at about $6.4 billion.

Reddit's latest S-1 filing showed that its revenue surged 20% year over year in 2023 to hit $804 million, with the majority of that coming from advertising on the site. The company remains unprofitable, however, and its net losses hit $90.8 million last year.

Reddit had over 73 million daily average users last quarter.

The company initially filed confidentially to go public in 2021. The IPO market froze soon after as the Federal Reserve embarked on its rate-hike campaign and sparked a difficult bear market for stocks that lasted throughout 2022. Last year was also mostly dormant for new offerings, with splashy names like Arm and Instacart failing to ignite a bigger wave of initial public offerings.

Ahead of its IPO, Reddit said it would allocate 8% of its 22 million shares to certain users and moderators, following a similar playbook to companies such as Robinhood and Airbnb, which let users in on their initial offerings. The move was met with disinterest by some of the platform's users across the site's top stock and investing subreddit.