The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) has officially listed its first two companies.
The listings went live at a virtual opening ceremony held for the employees of LTSE.
Asana, a cloud software company founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google and Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein, and Twilio, a cloud communications platform, are the first to list on LTSE.
Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founded LTSE as the first US stock exchange built on the premise that companies and investors perform better when they are enabled to focus on long-term strategies. LTSE’s principles-based listing standards require listed companies to detail and publish policies on their website that give stakeholders insight into how the issuer plans to build its business for the long term.
LTSE filed an application to the SEC for registration as a national securities exchange on November 30, 2018 and was approved on May 10, 2019. In June 2021 it announced that it had gained its first listing commitments from Asana and Twilio.
‘Asana and Twilio are taking a crucial step in advancing the importance of taking a long-term view,’ Ries says in a press release. ‘Today begins the transformation to our capital market system so that all stakeholders are properly represented.’
Speaking to Corporate Secretary sister publication IR Magazine in December 2020 about the need for a new stock exchange, Michelle Greene, president of LTSE, explained: ‘If you look at the exchange sector over the past several decades, there have been all sorts of innovations to make trading faster.
‘We’re really trying to do something different from any other exchange by innovating on the listings side. We’re focused on how we can create a different environment for issuers and investors to come together in alignment on long-term value creation.’
In the same interview with IR Magazine, Greene said LTSE was pursuing dual listings for the time being but primary listing may be something it looks at in the future. ‘We’re targeting companies that are already public and companies that are thinking of going public in a different way,’ she added.
A spokesperson for LTSE confirms that the exchange is in discussion with other companies for future listings, adding that the next step for LTSE is dual listings in the context of an IPO.
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