March 11 - Reddit is aiming for a valuation of up to

$6.4 billion in its U.S. initial public offering (IPO), the

social media platform said on Monday, as it nears one of the

most-anticipated stock market debuts of the last few years.

The company, along with some of its existing investors, is

targeting a sale of about 22 million shares, priced between $31

and $34 each, to raise up to $748 million.

The IPO, a major litmus test for investors' appetite for new

listings, will come more than two years after the company began

preparations to go public. So far this year, the IPO market

recovery has been uneven.

The targeted valuation, on a fully diluted basis, is less

than the $10 billion Reddit was valued at after a fundraising in

2021.

After its launch in 2005, Reddit became one of the

cornerstones of social media culture. Its iconic logo -

featuring an alien with an orange background - is one of the

most recognized symbols on the internet.

Its 100,000 online forums - dubbed "subreddits" - allow

conversations on topics ranging from "the sublime to the

ridiculous, the trivial to the existential, the comic to the

serious," according to co-founder Steve Huffman.

Huffman himself turned to one of the subreddits for help to

quit drinking, he wrote in his letter. Former U.S. President

Barack Obama also did an "AMA" ("ask me anything"), internet

lingo for an interview, with the site's users in 2012.

The company's influential communities are best known for the

"meme-stock" saga of 2021, when a bunch of retail investors

collaborated on Reddit's "wallstreetbets" forum to buy shares of

highly shorted companies like video game retailer GameStop ( GME )

.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan and Bank of

America Securities are the lead underwriters for the offering.

Reddit expects to list on the New York Stock Exchange under

"RDDT."