Roblox’s reference price is $ 45 per share. The listing is Wednesday.

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The New York Stock Exchange said on Tuesday that the reference price for Roblox, which goes public tomorrow, is $ 45 per share.

With around 652 million shares outstanding, the reference price indicates that Roblox’s market capitalization could reach $ 29.3 billion.

Roblox will trade on the NYSE on Wednesday under the symbol RBLX. About 199 million shares of Roblox will be placed on the market, but unlike a traditional IPO, the company is not raising new capital through the offering. Instead, the holders will sell shares they already own.

The reference price of $ 45 does not mean that this is where Roblox shares will begin trading. Instead, it is meant to be a guide that informs the public about recent private business activity, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Direct listings are not new, but have been gaining attention lately. Roblox will be the fifth company to go public using this method.

Palantir Technologies (ticker: PLTR), Asana (ASAN), Slack Technologies (WORK) and Spotify Technology (SPOT), all used direct listings to make their debut in the public stock market. Companies typically do not raise capital through direct listings, although in December the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a proposed rule change by the NYSE that allows a company to do so.

Roblox will not receive any products from the shareholders who sell their shares.

Goldman Sachs,

Morgan Stanley,

and

Bank of America

are advising Roblox on the deal.

When Spotify went public on the NYSE in 2018, its benchmark price was the level of the latest private secondary trades. In the 2019 Slack listing, the benchmark was closely informed by the volume-weighted average price of recent secondary trading activity, but it was not the exact average, the person said.

Unlike the price range defined by subscribers to a traditional IPO – usually a reasonable indicator of the offer price – the reference price is not particularly useful as an indicator of where a directly listed stock will trade.

Both Palantir and Asana went public in September using direct lists. Palantir’s reference price was $ 7.25, but the stock opened on September 30 at $ 10, hit a high of $ 11.42 and closed at $ 9.50. While Asana’s reference price was $ 21, it debuted at $ 27, peaked at $ 29.96 and ended at $ 28.80.

Founded in 2004, Roblox hosts games for children focused on digital characters that resemble Lego blocks. An average of 37.1 million people go to Roblox daily to play.

Roblox is not profitable. Losses increased to $ 253.3 million in 2020, compared to $ 71 million in 2019. Revenue increased by almost 82%, to $ 923.9 million. David Baszucki, co-founder, president and CEO of Roblox, has 70.1% of the total voting power, the prospectus said.

Write to Luisa Beltran at [email protected]