New York Stock Exchange sets Spotify reference price

At the start of last month we reported Spotify's intention to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Well, today's the day - and the NYSE has set a reference price for Spotify Technology of $132 per share.

The reference price will have a part to play in determining the company's eventual pricing. But it is not an offer price, and it is not the opening public price. The price will be determined by Citadel Securities and Morgan Stanley, who are currently analysing investors' buy and sell orders in order to set an opening price for the stock.

Analysts expect the company to eventually be valued at around $20bn.

There are certainly a lot of impressive numbers surrounding Spotify. It expects its user numbers to rise to over 170m this year - 90m of which will be paying customers. It has an estimated 40% of the global music streaming market, and it has seen revenue increase to a little over $6bn in 2017.

But, of course, this is a company that's never made a profit. Spotify's operating losses for 2017 are expected to be in the region of $330m. And tech companies' performance on the world's stock exchanges is notoriously volatile.

By the end of this week we should have a better idea of Spotify's true worth - and whether or not it constitutes a sound investment.

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Simon Lucas is a freelance technology journalist and consultant, with particular emphasis on the audio/video aspects of home entertainment. Before embracing the carefree life of the freelancer, he was editor of What Hi-Fi? – since then, he's written for titles such as GQ, Metro, The Guardian and Stuff, among many others.