MW Reddit teams with Intercontinental Exchange to build financial-analytics products

By James Rogers

The partnership will connect anonymous conversations on Reddit to Intercontinental Exchange's data-science and machine-learning infrastructure

Reddit Inc. is teaming up with Intercontinental Exchange to create data and analytics products for the financial industry, marking the social-media platform's latest move to harness and monetize its vast trove of user-generated content.

The Intercontinental Exchange deal also marks a notable foray into the financial sector for Reddit (RDDT).

The partnership will connect anonymous conversations on Reddit to Intercontinental Exchange's data-science and machine-learning infrastructure to provide new datasets and analytics, Reddit said in a blog post.

Related: Reddit's stock gets a boost as social-media platform ramps up AI-powered search with Reddit Answers

"This collaboration will make it easier for financial professionals and companies to access and analyze Reddit's vast amount of content, which can help inform market participants' investment decisions and risk management strategies," Reddit said.

Shares of Reddit are up 0.2% Wednesday. The stock has risen 324.7% since the company's initial public offering in March 2024.

Reddit has forged a number of partnerships of late. Last year the company announced a partnership with OpenAI that brings Reddit content to the ChatGPT artificial-intelligence service. Reddit also has a longstanding relationship with Alphabet Inc.'s $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$ Google that was deepened with a new cloud partnership in February 2024.

Related: Reddit's stock soars after social-media platform turns a profit, beats Q3 sales and earnings estimates

Last year Deutsche Bank said that Reddit was making progress on signing new deals with social-listening and finance companies. Social listening involves the close monitoring and analysis of social-media channels and can be used, among other things, to provide companies with customer data.

In the blog post announcing the Intercontinental Exchange collaboration, Reddit explained that, similar to the way brands use social-listening tools, the company will tap into and analyze the more than 16 billion posts and comments on its platform. The goal is to build new tools "aimed at rethinking and improving portfolio optimization, algorithmic trading, event-driven strategies, due diligence, and more," Reddit said.

In July Reddit announced a partnership with the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA Tour and NASCAR for video content and player engagement.

Related: 'Rocketship' Reddit's third-quarter results a real 'Jekyll and Hyde' story, says Bernstein

Reddit reports fourth-quarter results after market close on Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by FactSet are looking for earnings of 25 cents a share and revenue of $405 million.

In a note released Monday, Seaport Research Partners initiated coverage of Reddit with a neutral rating, citing the company's long-term fundamentals. Reddit has evolved to become one of the internet's largest user destinations, with over 365 million weekly users, Seaport analyst Aaron Kessler wrote. "We expect continued user growth momentum, particularly internationally," he said, but noted tougher comparisons in 2025, in particular for logged-out users. Kessler also described Reddit as an attractive platform for advertisers, "with a significant monetization opportunity ahead in both the U.S. and International."

Raymond James maintained its strong buy rating for Reddit in a note released this week. "Reddit shares have risen above internet peers [year to date] for good reason," analyst Josh Beck wrote. Raymond James's ad checks indicate agencies noting an approximately twofold increase in clients advertising on Reddit, Beck added. "Other growth initiatives tied to international [large language model] translation are showing promising early results," he wrote. "Our traffic analysis suggests an acceleration to triple-digit levels in early initial languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese)." Set against this backdrop, "expectations are high but achievable for the print," according to Beck.

Related: Reddit-OpenAI deal highlights demand for social-media platform's data

Of 23 analysts surveyed by FactSet, 14 have an overweight or buy rating, eight have a hold rating and one has an underweight rating for Reddit.

-James Rogers

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February 12, 2025 11:31 ET (16:31 GMT)

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