REDDIT IS PREPARING TO SELL SHARES TO THE PUBLIC. HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Reddit, that vast, lively and sometimes chaotic repository of internet discussion, projected a price for its initial public offering stock that values the 18-year-old social media platform at up to $6.4 billion.

The offering also makes Reddit one of the first online companies to offer shares to its contributors — the “Redditors” who comment on its boards and the moderators who manage them. That’s a break with traditional IPO practice, in which initial shares are typically sold to institutional investors and fund managers who then begin trading the stock on the open market. Adding the company’s users to the mix could make for a much livelier offering, and not necessarily in a good way.

It could be an interesting ride.

WHAT ARE THE DETAILS OF THE IPO?

Reddit plans to list 22 million shares at a price between $31 and $34, according to the latest version of the IPO prospectus it filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company stands to take in between $473.6 million and $519.4 million from the sale of roughly 15.3 million shares.

Reddit’s existing investors will sell an additional 6.7 million shares in the offering, raising between $208.4 million and $228.6 million for their own portfolios. Reddit itself won’t benefit from those sales.

Per standard IPO operating procedure, those shares will typically end up with a mix of mutual funds, hedge funds and other major investment groups who will then hawk them to their investor customers.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT THE REDDIT IPO?