The stock market has a new player- Reddit. The company launched its IPO for $34 a share and is listed under the New York Stock Exchange symbol RDDT.

Thursday marks the first day for reddit stock to trade, which is sure to set off a number of threads on Reddit itself. The online community has been around for almost 20 years and has developed into the largest internet forum of its kind, outlasting the old message boards that used to populate much of the web.

Ahead of the stock market offering, Reddit had to disclose a number of business details to adhere to regulations. This included details about how many people visit the site, which boasts 75 million users across close to 100,000 communities.

Reddit’s stock has already brought in some major investors, like Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. He bought 12.2 million shares of the stock. Reddit has 15.3 million shares, with 1.76 million being offered to Reddit’s users. The rest of them are available for anyone to purchase.

Is Reddit a Good Investment?

Reddit seems like a risk when looking at its financials. Even though the company has been around for a while they have not racked up the profits that competitor Meta (owner of Facebook) has. The market value of Reddit is about $6.4 billion. Compare that to Meta Platforms, which is valued at $1.2 trillion. Reddit has had a hard time making a profit, with $90.8 million losses for 2023 despite a 21% increase in revenue.

Reddit’s owners say that the major revenue loss was due to research into finding new ways to make money. There has been no word yet on whether the company expects to repeat these kinds of losses with the same endeavors in 2024.

For now, Reddit is an untested stock offering with the potential for incredible growth. There is a lot of excitement around it, but it is far too early to tell if it will be a consistent earner or if it will fare poorly on the stock market.