Spotify stock reference price set at $132 a share

Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service, made its debut on the New York Stock Market this morning with its reference price set at $132 a share. That puts the company value at $23.5 billion, and is on target with what CNBC reported last month when shares were traded on private markets were for as high as $132.50 a share. Spotify’s last valuation was at $8.4 billion when it raised a financing round of $400 million back in 2015.

Sweden-based Spotify is available in 61 countries with an overall user base that includes ad-supported free listeners of 159 million, and 70 million paying users as of January 2018. The company was founded in 2006 by Martin Lorentzon and Daniel Ek, who remains its current CEO.

For its public offering, Spotify has taken an unconventional and somewhat risky approach called direct listing, a route normally taken by small-cap companies, usually in biotech and life sciences. It’s a less expensive alternative to an IPO where the business sells shares directly to the public without any intermediaries, but it also means drawbacks like no deal support from the bankers.