Pandora raised the price range of its initial public offering (IPO) on Friday by at least one-third and boosted the number of shares to be sold by as many as 1 million, demonstrating again a seemingly insatiable demand from investors for a stake a new slate of Internet companies.
The popular online radio service may raise as much as US$176.3 million with the new offer.
Proceeds for Pandora Media Inc could reach about US$72 million if the shares price at US$12. Selling stockholders would get up to US$104.2 million.
Photo: AFP
Pandora raised the price range for the shares to between US$10 and US$12, up from the initial US$7 and US$9 it had been seeking. Pandora and the selling stockholders are also now offering up to 14.7 million shares, up from 13.7 million earlier.
The IPO from Pandora, based in Oakland, California, comes amid a sizzling market for the latest generation of Internet companies. These include daily deals site Groupon Inc, which has filed to go public, and professional networking service LinkedIn Corp, which has already completed its IPO.
Shares of LinkedIn, issued at US$45 in the middle of last month, soared above US$100 before noon on the day they hit the market and closed at US$94.25 on a trading volume of 30 million shares. Shares are now trading above US$72.
Pandora got its start in 2000 as a music recommendation service, then known as Savage Beast Technologies. It changed its name in 2005 when it launched an Internet radio service that lets people stream music over the Web. Users can create custom stations based on songs, genres or artists.
Pandora chief executive Joseph Kennedy owns 4.2 million Pandora shares. Other stockholders include venture capitalists Crosslink Capital, Walden Venture Capital and Greylock Partners and newspaper and magazine publisher Hearst Corp.
Pandora offers a basic, ad--supported service for free. Users can pay for a service with no ads that allows them to skip more songs they don’t like and listen to songs in higher sound quality. Most listeners still use the free service.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last