Reddit is closest thing to digital asset in social media: Sosnoff

Reddit (RDDT) made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, soaring to an intraday high of $57 per share. tastylive Founder and CEO Tom Sosnoff joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss his outlook and stake in the company.

Sosnoff states that Reddit piqued his interest because it was a relatively "cheap shot," and the social media aspect made it a "reasonable investment." He notes that when investors buy companies that are not yet public, "there's no exit strategy." However, he acknowledges that even though he is currently locked-up in the stock, he "appreciates what they do."

Sosnoff goes on to explain that he is hopeful in the stock, saying it's "the closest thing to a digital asset for a social media company."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

JOSH LIPTON: Reddit stock soaring after making its highly anticipated market debut after originally being priced at around 34. Shares now reaching highs of about 50 here. It is the first social media company to go public in five years. We were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange this morning and caught up with the CEO, who told us he expects the 19-year-old company to finally start turning a profit.

STEVE HUFFMAN: In the second half of the last year, we were profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis. We grew costs slower than revenue. Last year, revenue three times as fast. And so I like the way the trend that we're on. And I think if we can keep doing that, we're in great shape.

- What gets you to sustainable profits?

STEVE HUFFMAN: Look, the work that we're doing right now. I think our work is working. Reddit, we have such high margins, that if we just continue to sell, and we continue to be mindful about costs, this company scales I think in a really impressive way.

JOSH LIPTON: Let's bring in now Tom Sosnoff, the founder and CEO of Tasty Live and an investor at Reddit since last year. Tom, it it's good to have you on the show. So you are Tom a Reddit investor.

I'm just curious, Tom, to start with why you invested. What did you see about Reddit that you liked?

TOM SOSNOFF: What I saw on Reddit at the time was well, first, I used the platform. So I like it. Obviously, know about it.

But I think at the time, I thought about it, you know. And you got to remember last summer prices to me seemed expensive in the stock market, even though they were a fraction of what they are today, but at the time they seemed expensive.

And I thought Reddit after-- I remember reading about it at the $15 billion offering and also at the $10 billion offering. And at the time, I thought, OK, well, if they've discounted it by 67% off the top offer or half of the 50% off the second one, I figured, you know what? It's a cheap shot here relative.

And I also love social media apps. So I love social media. So I thought, OK, it's a reasonable investment. You don't know though.

JULIE HYMAN: You never know, I guess. There's no sure things in investing or in life, Tom. But I imagine that you're relatively pleased to see this action on the first day. I mean, you know, how long do you ride it then? Like how do you think about this as an investment short-term, long-term, medium-term.

TOM SOSNOFF: Well, the funny thing is that, I mean, I'm sure you guys you know, any time you buy a company that's not a public company, and there's no guarantee that they're going to go public, you don't necessarily have a way out. There's no exit strategy for that. So one of the risks of buying a company that's not publicly traded is they might never go public and you might never be able to get out.

In the case of Reddit, personally, I'm locked up for six months. But I don't know if I will sell it even six months from now. I might hold this for years to come. I really don't know.

I appreciate what they do because I know how hard it is to get millions of users to use a platform. And I also appreciate the intellectual side to Reddit. I think it's very interesting for a social media app.

So, you know, I guess, we'll have to make a judgment. We'll have to see if that management team can actually, if going public, makes them into a different kind of company where they become something special. None of us know.

JOSH LIPTON: Tom, do you also see this as kind of a smart AI play? I mean, that's in part what Reddit is kind of pitching here. We'll be sort of selling data to Google for their models, train their models.

Although it sounds like-- you know, sounds like regulators might have some questions there. But what do you think, Tom?

TOM SOSNOFF: Well, first of all, I love Reddit. I don't love Reddit technology. I think there's too many purists on Reddit that love the way it is. It is almost like baseball purists.

And I wish their technology was a little better. I don't like when companies say, well, we can sell our data and we can do that. I don't think that really is-- that's not what excites me about Reddit.

What excites me about Reddit is, I think, the companies that have a few hundred million relatively active users learn how to monetize those users when they become public because they're forced to. And sometimes forcing companies to learn how to monetize users is something that you can't underestimate what going public does in that situation. So as somebody that's run multiple public companies, I've been down that road before. And I think you're going to see Reddit be a very different company a year or two from now.

JULIE HYMAN: Tom, what do you think about the whole Wall Street bets phenomenon? I mean, obviously, you're very keyed in with the retail trader. So you have both The Wall Street bets phenomenon as a potential risk or a potential benefit I guess for Reddit.

You have the fact that they've offered shares to some of their users. How is that all going to play out?

TOM SOSNOFF: Well, I love the fact that they offered shares to their moderators and their Redditors, you know. And because I think that having skin in the game, it's a hell of a commitment to what Reddit asks to self-police a social media app. And for Reddit to ask their Redditors to do what they do, it's incredibly time-consuming, it's resource-draining.

And I think that their community is crazy healthy. And I like to compare. They have a very sticky community. And I think that's something that's really valuable.

So I like the fact that now people have skin in the game. I think yesterday we were making a comparison to. Reddit is the closest thing to a digital asset for a social media company.

And what that means is, just like people when they buy Bitcoin, or they buy ETH, they almost never want to sell it. It's like a passive long. I kind of feel like Reddit is going to have a little bit of that going for it. As a social media app where people that use the product, they're not going to want to necessarily trade it as much as they're going to want to hold it.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, we'll see how that ends up playing out for them and for you for that matter, Tom. It's great to see you. I hope to catch up again soon.

TOM SOSNOFF: Looking forward to it. Thanks so much.