FaZe Clan is now officially a publicly traded company. Trading under the "FAZE" ticker, you can now purchase a piece of FaZe Clan for just $9.19 USD.
Which isn’t actually great. Those shares started trading on the Nasdaq this morning at $13.00 USD, which means FaZe Clan’s initial valuation of $1 billion has dropped to $725 million. FAZE seems to have stabilized after a precipitous morning, and with the stock market’s noted volatility in recent weeks, there’s every chance for FAZE to climb back to where it started.
FaZe initially announced plans to go public in October through a vehicle called a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) merger. As explained by CNBC, this is where a private business is purchased and taken to a public market by a different entity. SPACs were popular during the pandemic as an alternative to a traditional initial public offering, but they haven’t done well in recent months.
An amended financial filing prior to today’s trading noted that FaZe Clan reported $50 million in revenue in 2021 and expects $90 million for 2022, but also an overall loss of $19 million this year. To offset that loss and grow the company, FaZe plans to add more creators and grow its existing communities.
"FaZe Clan will fund investments and we will create the product and we’ll own a bigger piece of the upside," said CEO Lee Trink. "That’s the future of the creator economy."
Trink also said that the future of FaZe wasn’t entirely in esports. FaZe announced a partnership with DraftKings last November to create new gambling-related content, while the esports brand also plans to get into the ghost kitchen business with its own food offerings. FaZe is also creating more online content, such as the unFaZed variety show.
FaZe's future success may hinge on staying out of the spotlight. Several of Faze Clan's 93 members have come under fire in recent months, including one which left the clan after dropping an N-bomb live on stream.
Source: Read Full Article