The New York Stock Exchange has set the reference price for Slack shares, which go on sale today, at $26, reports CNBC. Slack’s shares will be traded under the ticker symbol “WORK.” However, though Slack shares will go on sale to the public today, this isn’t a traditional IPO most tech companies are so fond of.
Slack’s initial share sale is instead what’s known as a direct listing. Direct listings enable existing private investors in a company to sell their shares to the public directly, whereas an IPO sees a company create new shares and sell those shares to raise new capital. This direct listing allows a company’s private owners to immediately offload their shares by selling directly to the public.
Slack isn’t the first tech company to do a direct listing instead of an IPO. Last year Spotify opted to do a direct listing of its shares over a traditional IPO. At that time, Spotify’s direct listing reference price was set at $132. Slack is expected to be worth as much as $17 billion once shares start trading today.
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