Bloomberg to announce Bloomberg IPO through PSTH 
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I wouldn’t call this a celebrity SPAC. Unlike the one formed by Billy Beane, the man behind Moneyball, and ones with Hollywood ties.
In finance circles Ackman is a celebrity, not many money people have Netflix series about them and it not be because of disgrace. Albeit one about what turned out to be a disaster (even though I agree with him)
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What’s the minimum to be eligible for a warrant? It’s 9 shares?
Warrants are not supported on FT. But elsewhere, yes.
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Above it says that they will be sold and distributed as cash on the day of the merger. Would the warrent price match that of the share price on the day of the merger? As if it is stripe, I’m very bullish
This is the informative bit in the S/1. Looks like you will need 9 shares to be sure of getting a warrant but no cash/fractions will be paid. The more people redeem the higher the distribution since the pool is fixed so you may still get a warrant with less than nine (say if the ratio rises to three-ninths you would only need three shares). If someone knows more do let me know.
I think everyone on the subreddit and online in general wants it to be Stripe but there really hasn’t been more clues towards it than any other potential approach. In fact I’ve read that a PSTH board member may have contractual restrictions working for a Stripe combination from his employment at Square, and that Stripe hiring audit or finance related positions may be more indicative of a traditional IPO.
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Someone on Reddit (please take with a pinch of salt because this) a timeline / DD around the PSTH Stripe merger that I thought was interesting.
“Linking research on Stripe going public (PSTH breadcrumbs)
Analysis from my Twitter thread (below) for the folks on reddit.
COVID-19 has accelerated Stripe’s growth this year at a pace that was never before possible, and their growth numbers will never look this good mainly due to huge switchover to online during covid-19 (ref) - high growth is exactly what investors love and will look exceptional on any investor presentation.
Going public will allow Stripe to fulfil their 2021 roadmap outlaid here this month.
September 2020 Ackman’s Bloomberg Interview
Ackman made clear he’s a huge fan of Stripe founders, but they were too early to go public. I think Stripe took this and went full force to prepare for a merger with Ackman.
During Ackman’s interview, he mention’s he has had discussions with a strong family business, but it lacks the necessary management structure for a public company (ref)
October 2020
Ackman follows founders and Stripe on Twitter
Stripe hires Dan Pontes, a post-merger integration specialist (ref)
Hires Justin Smith as Head of Corporate Law at Stripe, specialities include securities, public company reporting and governance, M&A, and international transactions (capital markets transactions, corporate governance, equity) (ref)
November 2020
Bloomberg reports Stripe in talks raise capital at a $70B valuation. The type of funding is not disclosed. Reported by Katie Roof who usually reports on private funding deals but is followed by Stripe founder and Jackie Reses (on PSTH board).
The number fits nicely with Ackman’s SPAC if PSTH were to receive 10% of the final company. I would expect the structure to look like this. Complete speculation but for illustrative purposes:
- 4 B - $PSTH shareholders 6%
- 3B - Ackman Direct Funds 4%
- 63B - Stripe 90%
December 2020
From Irish interview with Stripe co-founder
“IPO considerations are secondary to us. If you sit in on a management meeting at Stripe, then we’re not talking about IPOs , but about customer issues and our product roadmap”
A SPAC merger would allow founders to focus on PRODUCT/GROWTH and have Ackman handle IPO side, essentially outsourcing a one-time job rather than hiring a team to IPO, then having no use for them, with less associated fees. The statement from the interview backs up this thesis.
January 2021
--Stripe adds Christa Davies to board, experience merging huge companies. Christa has worked on mergers valued at 80B+ - Stripe’s value sits between 40-80B (ref)
--Stripe hires Shannon Brayton, who has helped a number of companies move from private to public and told their story along the way, Shannon has also been liking SPAC related content indicating she is preparing for the role that started yesterday (ref)
--Stripe develops 2021 roadmap and posts 800+ jobs, 125 of which are in finance and directly reference experience with public accounting, SEC, public accounting in companies with 5000+ employees (ref).
-- Chamath Tweet to Stripe CEO about going public ignored indicating NDA in place (ref)
-- Venkatesh Perumal (Global Finance & Strategy), Natalie Kong (FinData), Shannon Brayton (Head of Comms) all interacting with SPAC content in the last month (ref)
IPO/merger will give them liquidity to expand globally at a faster rate (cash helps speed this up with acquisitions, they’ve already started acquiring established payment companies in various geos) + stability over the next number of years while they build the backbone of the internet (re 2021 roadmap video ). Obviously the questions we are all asking ourselves is this with $PSTH or IPO, no one can give you a definite answer.
Based on Stripe’s board addition of Christa and her experience working through mergers at valuations in the 80b+ range, it makes me highly confident. That and the hiring of Dan Pontes after the Bloomberg interview are enough to make be think this is happening in the background.
Twitter Followings
Well known that Ackman follows Stripe founders on Twitter (October 13th 20’). While they don’t follow Ackman back, John does follow Jackie Reses (on PSTH board). Patrick and John have been liking stock market related tweets this past week (ref)
Stripe employees leaving
Those looking up Stripe employees recently may have noticed a bunch of early employees leaving this month (ref). This usually happens just before a company goes public, as their founding shares will make most millionaires, the same happened with snap and facebook.
Of course, all this could be nonsense. Please don’t take this as investment advice, I’m just sharing my personal notes and putting out a call for others to share things I’ve missed both good and bad so I can personally make the best choice with my capital.
Full thread from Twitter, with screenshots:
https://twitter.com/DUS0L/status/1353854001209597952
Caution
Major red flag being Stripe CEO’s Tweet December 7th (ref) that indicated no deal had closed with PSTH. It seems very suspicious the original question was deleted and he has ignored subsequent questions for clarification since. My only theory is due to potential NDAs in place with Ackman until things are finalised, it would be easy to just tweet out a denial to stop any speculation.
Other caution being Stripe could surprise IPO or Direct List. For those unfamiliar here’s why SPACs offer a better alternative to Direct Listings / IPO’s https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-costs-going-public-how-do-spacs-stack-up-part-1-money-rascoff/
Not investment advice, my personal research
Updated: Jan 27th, 12:57”
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Hasn’t Stripe already filed the necessary documents with the Sec ahead of any IPO, meaning they’re not going the SPAC route?
They’ve made a lot of SOX based hires but haven’t filled anything with the SEC (yet) which rules out IPO but leaves a SPAC merger or direct listing still on the table
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Very interesting podcast, she seems bullish on Fintech
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I forgot to share this. Bill Ackman’s £PSH is holding a shareholder meeting on Feb 18, hopefully with the PSTH news we’re all hoping for: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSTH/comments/l4ypb9/pst_not_psth_holding_their_annual_investor/
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Seeing as the warrants are a 2/9 split, the 9th Feb would make a neat announcement date
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2/9 is happening 
papa Bill delivering
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Why tomorrow?
Or do you mean the 2nd of September?
I only guessed tomorrow because it is very close, my initial guess of a “2/9” would be the the 2nd of September.
US date format…
I know, but surprising coming from a likely UK citizen/resident.
Also, is 2/9 simply because of the warrants?
Yeah my bad I didn’t think twice about the meme, since the warrant distribution is intuitively two ninths rather than nine over two.
It could be tomorrow, or it could just be an announcement of a LOI. Its pretty clear they have a target locked though.
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