Reddit’s S-1 paints the picture of a company with a complicated past, present, and future

And now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for—a Reddit IPO.

It’s official, the social media company is going public after months of speculation. Reddit filed its S-1 yesterday and revealed all sorts of things we didn’t know before. That’s the reason an S-1 is exciting, right? You get to look under the hood at a company that was previously firmly shut.

But the numbers under Reddit’s hood, while interesting, aren’t exactly what I’d call exciting. To me, they’re illustrative of a company with a complex past, present, and (in all likelihood) future. Reddit’s 2023 was mixed, the filing shows. While the company’s revenue growth was up 21%, the company also clocked $90.8 million in losses last year. Reddit additionally reported 73.1 million daily active users in the three months leading up to the end of the year—and that number gets bigger once you get to weekly active users, 267.5 million.

Those user numbers sound big, but so you understand what Reddit is up against when it comes to social network scale, consider Facebook (yes, specifically the platform). Per Meta’s latest earnings, Facebook’s daily active users were, on average, 2.11 billion in December. That leaves out Meta’s so-called “Family of Apps” which includes Instagram and WhatsApp. Even Snap, a social media minnow compared to Meta, boasted 414 million daily active users in Q4 2023.

My guess is that in the public markets, Reddit will be pressured to get its user numbers up, stat.

But there are other pieces to this puzzle, odd details that have led up to this moment. Reddit has, I would argue, an oddball relationship with the public markets. For one, this isn’t exactly Reddit’s first IPO rodeo. There’s part of me that can’t help but ask, “do they really mean it this time?” and every indication is that they do.

But, as Taylor Swift and Bon Iver would say, “I think I've seen this film before.” In 2022, Reddit reportedly tapped Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for a go-public that was, at the time, ostensibly imminent. Reddit also said it filed for an IPO in 2021. In 2017, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said a go-public was “inevitable.”

Another curious twist: In a way that’s not actively true of other social media platforms, Redditors themselves have played a role in the public markets before—the now-famous r/WallStreetBets subreddit was central to GameStop and meme-stock mania in 2021. I checked up on WallStreetBets as I was writing this, and the primary post that caught my eye read “Reddit lists WSB as a risk factor for its IPO” with a smirking emoji.

And add to that: Over in the secondary markets, the appetite for Reddit shares is not exactly ravenous. According to private markets platform Forge, there hasn’t been a spike in activity surrounding IPO chatter for Reddit (which one might typically expect) and year-to-date the company’s private market share price has remained flat.

It’s not clear how much money Reddit is hoping to raise in its flotation, nor at what price it hopes to sell shares. A Bloomberg report last month said the company was hoping for a valuation of at least $5 billion, which would be quite a step down from the $10 billion valuation Reddit reportedly garnered in 2021 fundraising.

What this all amounts to, I don’t know. But the one thing I do know is this—people love an IPO, and many people (myself included) love Reddit as consumers. The exit market is so stilted, and if it rips, Reddit could be a private markets hero for reopening the IPO market at a tough time. A successful Reddit IPO could provide a much-wanted, much-needed, much-yearned for reopening to the public markets. But this also isn’t a guaranteed slam dunk.

If you want to read more about Reddit—today seems like the day, no?—my Fortune colleagues have got you. Jessica Mathews wrote about why this is a particularly treacherous time for Reddit to be pursuing its IPO, Kylie Robison wrote about Reddit’s connection to Sam Altman, and Alicia Adamczyk explained what makes Reddit’s IPO nontraditional.

See you Monday,

Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com