Social media giant Reddit has announced that it will make its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RDDT. The filing did not disclose the number of shares that will be offered.

Yahoo Finance Anchors Brad Smith and Seana Smith break down the latest development for Reddit and what it could mean for the company moving forward.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: You read it. Officially filing to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. It is the first big tech IPO of the year. Sources telling Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi that the public debut will likely come in late March. This will be the largest social media company to go public since Pinterest back in 2019.

Clearly, this is a massive test, not only for obviously, very specifically, the tech sector in terms of maybe some of those IPOs that we could be getting later on this year. But more broadly speaking for the broader market here because we know the IPO market has been lackluster to say the least, there was some optimism at the end of last year.

That maybe some of the larger IPOs aren't being one of them would prompt others to come off the sidelines that in fact, did not happen. So now that we have this filing here from Reddit. There is some optimism about what this first major tech listing of the year. How big of a boost that could potentially be here to the IPO market and the broader market in general.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah. And you're taking a look at that trend line. I didn't even know if this chart was going to make it into the show. I'm glad it did. Can we toss it back up here because it's so important that it comes from the folks over at Renaissance Capital, gives you a good picture for these past two years where we've had to off of that bottom in 2022. 2023, yeah, it was something.

But it wasn't anything even near the scale of 2016 for that matter. And so now what we're going to be watching for very closely is which of these is the company that really elicits awe in this market at least, where you're continuing to see things continue to go up on any type of AI trading frenzy that is really being a boost or at least the focal point for so many investors out there and a rising tide more broadly.

Does that just make it enough of a good environment for some of these companies to say, OK, we're past some of the volatility that would really make us a little bit more wary to enter into the markets. Companies think about that, they think about exactly what the trends are in their own industry as well. And you think about the social media landscape right now.

There is a big changeover a shift in where people are gravitating towards spending more and more of their time. And I think Reddit has done a good job of making sure that they retain a lot of those users. There's one particular term that people are going to hear once this company starts reporting earnings time after time after time again. And it's the daily active users.

But it's a qualified user based on how daily unique user, unique active user, something like that. I know I butchered that. But anyway, it's a new one for me too. As we're continuing to look across there, it is the daily active uniques. This is a person that comes onto the site that is at least loading up the website or engaging with the platform in some form or another here.

Larger question of how they continue to monetize that as well.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, exactly. And two of the things to point out here within this S-1 filing that took some people by surprise. We're going to talk about a little bit more later here. Touting AI as really a growth area and to expand on that even further Sam Altman being a very large stakeholder in the company. We knew his involvement but exactly the size of the stake that he held in Reddit coming as a surprise to many on Wall Street.

And then to the other thing that struck me was the fact that Reddit here seems to be leaning into its roots and I say that because the reserving stock to sell to its loyal users in its IPO and they're going even further than that. Setting aside some shares to sell to individual investors.

They're doing that through brokerages such as Fidelity, SoFi and Robinhood. So really playing into the base here at Reddit which is something that also stuck out to me within this S-1 filing.

BRAD SMITH: That's all right. Decacorn making its way to the public markets, we'll see exactly when they do go. Brian Sozzi, saying March according to his sources here.