It's nice when good things happen to good companies. After a more than decade of struggling to turn its streaming music service into a viable business (for a good primer check out Stephanie Clifford's 2007 story), Pandora is profitable and poised for a blockbuster IPO. Today, it announced that it is raising the price of the offering by roughly 50 percent:
Online radio station Pandora increased the share price for its initial public offering today, bringing the company’s valuation to nearly $2 billion, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Pandora’s shares will now debut on the New York Stock Exchange and sell at a price between $10 and $12, up from the company’s original IPO pricing of between $7 and $9. That gave the company a valuation of $1.3 billion. LinkedIn also followed a similar strategy, ramping up its IPO pricing to increase its claimed valuation from $3 billion to $4 billion in less than two weeks.
The comparison to LinkedIn, which had a monster IPO a few weeks ago, is interesting. Although pundits have been quick to brush aside the idea that we are witnessing a Netscape Moment, LinkedIn's success, even slightly tarnished by a drop in its stock price over the past couple of weeks, does seem to be factoring in Pandora's bullish pricing strategy.
It's a fair bet that the founders of other IPO hopefuls—Facebook, Groupon, and Yelp, among others—will be watching closely.
Lena Headey Ali Larter Angelina Jolie Erica Leerhsen Angela Marcello
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