This past week, game company Roblox Corp, creators of the eponymous Roblox, had their IPO go public this week. By the end of the day, the business had a valuation of $45 billion.
Roblox went public back on Wednesday, opening up trading at $64.50 per share, according to a report on Bloomberg. By the time it closed in New York it was trading at $69.50 per share, giving the company a market value of more than $38 billion USD. However, when the employee stock options and restricted stock units are added, the valuation brings the game company to $45 billion USD.
Bloomberg reports Roblox Corp is one of the most valuable companies to go public while we've been in a pandemic.
Roblox itself is a game platform and creation system, giving players the ability to create worlds and games for their friends and other players on the internet to join in the fun. During the pandemic, Roblox saw its user base grow as the platform was used to host virtual birthday parties and more. Last year before the pandemic truly hit, Roblox actually saw its valuation jump from $4 billion to $29.5 billion before going public.
To put Roblox's current valuation into context, as Eurogamer notes, the current valuation of $45 billion is higher than Ubisoft ($8.16bn), Electronic Arts ($37.43bn) and Take-Two ($18.98bn). And with the recent acquisition of what current is the highest video game acquisition cost in games industry history with Microsoft buying ZeniMax Media at $7.5 billion, you could actually buy six ZeniMax Media acquisitions with Roblox Corps new valuation amount.
After the market closed on Wednesday, Roblox CEO and Founder David Baszucki thanked those for their support via Twitter.
We are deeply humbled by the overwhelming support for @Roblox and our public offering today. To all those who helped us get one step closer to fulfilling our vision of the #Metaverse—thank you. #RobloxIPO
— David Baszucki (@DavidBaszucki) March 10, 2021
