The online gaming company announced the switch on Wednesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report. intends to go public through a direct listing instead of an initial public offering as it earlier planned. Roblox designs and develops online games such as internet three-dimensional and tutorial games. website home screen on a smartphone arranged in Little Falls, New Jersey, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec.
has already announced its intentions.Roblox Corp. Grocery-delivery company Instacart is reportedly considering the direct-listing route while Coinbase Global Inc. More and more companies have opted for direct listings to go public, such as Spotify Technology SA SPOT,
Has risen 41% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index Has surged nearly 130%, while the S&P 500 index As of Tuesday’s close, the Renaissance IPO ETF The past 12 months have been kind to companies going public. The company seeks to grow out its business by retaining its pre-teen users as they grow older while appealing to new users already in their teens or young adulthood. Roblox reported revenue of $923.9 million and a loss of $257.7 million in 2020, compared with revenue of $508.4 million in revenue and a loss of $71 million in 2019, and revenue of $325 million and a loss of $88.1 million in 2018. Read: Roblox is going public: 5 things to know about the tween-centric gaming platform The company pivoted to plans for a direct listing from a planned IPO back in January after getting a fresh venture-capital infusion of $520 million that valued the company at $29.5 billion. The public debut of Roblox has been anticipated since word of an IPO began circulating in October. In its latest filing, Roblox said nearly 199 million Class A shares had been registered for resale, for a total of about 388.2 million available shares. In a direct listing, current stakeholders convert their ownership into stock based on trading prices in private markets. Sidestepping the initial public offering route, the the tween-centric gaming platform decided to go public through a direct listing, which differs from an IPO in that shares are not backed by underwriters.