BuzzFeed Is About to Go Public — and Its Employees Are Walking Out in Protest
Dec 2, 2021
BuzzFeed shareholders will vote today to take the company public via a merger with a special-purpose-acquisition company, or SPAC. The deal is expected to close Friday. By Monday, the company could start trading under the stock ticker BZFD. Shares are expected to trade for around $10. Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s CEO, has already sent out invitations for the ringing of the bell on the floor of NASDAQ and for a celebratory dinner at the Indian restaurant Sona, where he will perhaps chow down on $38 green pepper halibut and think about the some $64 million in stock options he holds and the fact that he will retain control of the company he founded. But not everyone is in the mood to uncork Champagne.
Earlier this year, Alex Korda, a deals analyst at the Edge, studied 115 SPAC deals and found that the ones in the communication-services sector were consistently among the worst performers. “Definitely this is one of the two major sectors that we found are best to avoid, or at least view with extreme caution,” says Korda. “In the first month, 22 percent of communication companies outperformed, meaning they made money and they outdid the index, while the other 78 percent flat out lost money,” he says. “By the third month and beyond, they were all losing money at a deepening rate through to the 12-month period.”