- Roblox shares went public on Wednesday. The stock jumped 54%.
- Founder CEO David Baszucki saw his stake grow to over $4.5 billion.
- His brother did well, too.
- See more stories on Insider's business page .
For many parents (and their kids) across the US, Roblox has become the next best thing to exploring the world in real life.
The user-generated platform offers a mind-numbing array of "experiences," allowing anyone to take their personal avatars and jump around to do just about anything imaginable.
Roblox's growth and popularity, however, are anything but virtual. Fifteen years ago, the company was a tiny startup launched by cofounders David Baszucki, who remains CEO, and Erik Cassel, who died from cancer in 2013.
Today the company counts over half of all Americans under the age of 16 as users, it said recently. It has exploded from 12 million daily active users in 2018 to 17.6 million in 2019 — and grew 85%, to 32.6 million, in 2020.
That's the kind of growth that gets a startup a valuation of about $29 billion, which is where Roblox sat ahead of its direct listing on Wednesday. After getting a so-called reference price of $45 a share, the stock took off in its market debut, closing Wednesday up 54% to $69.47.
Roblox's venture capital investors — which include Altos Ventures, Meritech Capital, and Tiger Global Management — are set to enjoy the spoils.
The company's pre-public filing with the SEC didn't name all of the investors who took part in Roblox's $855.7 million overall fundraising through the years, but it did reveal its biggest shareholders.
We don't know what investors paid for their shares to calculate their profit but we know the company's Class A shares traded in the secondary market in 2018 at a range of $2.34 to $4.53 a share, and at $6.34 a share throughout 2020. The earliest investors paid only a few pennies per share, according to some reports. All this to say that many investors bought in at bargain prices.
And we can calculate the total value of each major shareholder's stake by pricing all of their shares at Wednesday's closing price of $69.47.
As is typical in tech IPOs these days, Roblox is using a two-tier structure where it sells Class A shares to the public, with each of those shares offering one vote per share; and it has Class B shares — which are owned only by its founders, executives and key investors — that come with 20 votes per share.
Roblox cofounder and CEO David Baszucki, through his Class B ownership, will have more than 70% of the company's voting power.
Here's who can cash out huge paydays now that Roblox is public.
Via PakApNews