The following e-mail was sent out to Motley Fool contributors on Sunday by David Gardner and Tom Gardner, the founders of the personal finance news service:
To our friends, to family, to any twerps who doubted us, and to the many millions who make The Motley Fool home to the world’s greatest investment community:
We finally have the opportunity to fulfill our destiny. A day that many of you have asked for — begged for, really — is here.
The Motley Fool is going public.
You got it right.
We’re tying our wagon to a moonbeam and creating the mother of all exit strategies designed to get as many shares as possible into the hands of Fools like you.
Here are five key things to know about our IPO:
1. Available to Fools ONLY
Our top priority is to make sure you can buy as many shares of our company as possible before the stock trades on the open market. We’ve always let you go first in our membership portfolios; this is no different. These shares are available only to you, today, at Fool.com.2. Your Pre-IPO Price
We’ve been working ridiculously hard for the last 4.5 weeks to make sure we nail this. And our team of quantitative stars — including two past winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences — has set our pre-IPO price of $4.01. Wait till you hear how ridiculous of a bargain that is.3. Expected First Trade
That same team estimates that our stock will trade around $28 when it debuts tomorrow morning. Our underwriter-auditor Coopers & Andersen priced the offering at $16 to $18 per ticket (el cheapo, for reasons explained below). We fully expect to blow through that price as our PR team whips up a media frenzy at daybreak.Simply put, our models cannot generate a scenario where Motley Fool stock does not make it past $25 per share. Think about this: You will make four to seven times your money within a day.
4. The Exhaustive Approach to Supply
We’ve waited nearly 20 years to be able to set up a system like this. Nothing will stop it now. In order to guarantee that every Motley Fool member has access to an abundance of shares at that $4.01 price, we two founders will be selling virtually our entire stake in the pre-after-hours market today.We’ll do fine, even with that sinful discount — don’t worry about us. What you should be worrying about is how your offspring will treat you if you look this seven-bagger gift horse in the mouth.
5. Deadline: Midnight Tonight
And there’s no reason to wait for that deadline.We have already begun taking orders, and we’re thrilled by the early response. There’s no sales pitch necessary here. You’re buying a company you know, from us, with a community of buyers alongside you. And while we obviously hope you’ll consider holding your shares for the long term, we won’t frown at anyone selling a seven-bagger in less than 24 hours.
Read more here, including the company’s S-1 filing, which has a coupon for half off one share of Apple stock.
