Comments on: Redbox Hires New Executive, Preparing for IPO

By: fiser

fiser — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:08:51 +0000

are you nuts all you have to do is go to your nearby Redbox kiosk get a empty dvd case for a dollar or free with a code right there at the machine that’s maybe the reason why they took so long to answer you OMG

By: P.D. Gault

P.D. Gault — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:31:33 +0000

I’m sure that this is going to be a great service, someday. But, after my recent experiences with this company I would venture to say that they need to REALLY improve on their customer service. It took me a month of emails, being responded to every few, sometimes up to 8 days apart, to get responses that often had nothing to do with my original email! After finally calling them, and being on hold for over half an hour I got the issue resolved. All I wanted to do was return a DVD I forgot to put in the case, it should be alot simpler. So I have to ask, why did it take so long to get email responses, longer to get correct responses, and why was their call volume so high on a Wednesday morning? If you ask me redbox has a long way to go on customer service.

By: Justin

Justin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:00:35 +0000

I’m with everyone else. Awaiting the IPO. Where’s the best place to keep an eye out for it?

By: ZP

ZP — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:06:56 +0000

Does anybody know when Redbox will go public? Where can we buy stocks before they go IPO? What’s the sybmol?

By: GT

GT — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:34:59 +0000

Looking for part time employment in Houston Texas.Who do I contact?

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 26 May 2008 21:04:49 +0000

Has there been any details released of which brokerage firms will issue the ipo? Would be interested in buying them before they hit the market.

By: Davis Freeberg

Davis Freeberg — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:49:06 +0000

Coinstar’s ownership is relevant in that they’ll own a piece of Redbox after they go public, but part of the reason companies go public is because owners like Redbox (and McDonalds who owns the other half) want out of their investment. They won’t share all of their shares in the IPO, so they’ll certainly have a lot of influence over who might be allowed to buy them and they’ve definitely done a great job of integrating Redbox into both McDonald’s and Coinstar locations from a strategy perspective, but with them selling shares to the public, it’s a sign that they would rather maximize Redbox’s value then own them for strategic options. Once they are public a strategic buyer might value the company differently (higher) then Coinstar or even the public markets would. Coinstar could always end up buying the other half and taking it pseudo private, but they probably wouldn’t be thinking IPO right now, if they were interested in spending that kind of cash. Of course there’s a good chance that Redbox stays a stand alone company which would be fine by me, but whenever you enjoy the type of success they’ve seen, it will attract suiters who’d rather buy than innovate.

By: Cee

Cee — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:44:36 +0000

How come you don’t say that Redbox is owned by Coinstar. Is that not relevant?

By: Davis Freeberg

Davis Freeberg — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:02:37 +0000

Since they are going public vs. selling out to a larger company, it makes me suspect that Redbox will stay independent for awhile, but you have to imagine that people will start talking about them as a target, once they are public. The most obvious fit (IMHO) would be Netflix because Redbox addresses the short head demand so well, but they’ve been so focused on having nothing to do with retail that I think they’d take a pass on this.

Blockbuster could try and make a grab for them and there would certainly be synergies, but paying for a Redbox acquisition might be too much for them and since Redbox would canibalize Blockbuster sales, I can’t imagine that it would be a very good strategic fit for Redbox. Right now, Redbox can only take market share. You’d have to offer them a lot of money for them to want to be put in a position where they’d be at a competitive disadvantage.

You could always see a wildcard like Apple show up and try to use Redbox as a way to start fighting against Netflix. Apple’s done a lot with music downloads, but have a long way to go on the video side. Since there are still so many DVD players out there, its going to take a DVD/VOD hybrid solution in order to gain critical mass in this market. A Redbox purchase by Apple would be atypical from what they normally do, but if they recognized the benefits of the hybrid model early on, it would make a ton of sense for them to try and get this exposure by using the DVD kiosk as a way to differentiate themselves from their competition. They could also throw in support for iTunes sales via USB as a way of slowly converting the DVD luddites over. It might make even more sense for Microsoft to buy them instead though because I know that they are using Windows for their kiosk operating system.

We probably won’t see too much speculation on this until they’ve been trading for a year, but it’s an interesting question to think about. In the near term though, I’m more interested in trying to guess what their market cap will be once they do go public. Depending on how much money they can raise, this could have a big impact on their expansion plans. Who knows, maybe the real question that we should be asking is who is Redbox going to buy once they get that cash infusion?