Piano Company shares are listed on the NYSE

Steinway & Sons, the venerable piano maker founded in 1853, is, according to a. make his public debut on the world’s largest stock exchange stage Delivery on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the IPO prospectus, it intends to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker STWY, although it did not provide an expected share price.

Steinway pianos were first born in Manhattan by German immigrant Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, and in the 169 years since then the brand has carved a legacy as the leading instrument brand for concert pianists performing in the world’s most celebrated theaters, the Royal Albert Hall in London the Sydney Opera House in Australia. (Famous Steinway players include Lang Lang, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Irving Berlin, and Billy Joel.)

For many, the name connotes culture and prestige – a reputation bolstered by the occasional artistic masterpiece the company unveils. In 1938, it donated its 300,000th piano to the White House, with gold leaf decals depicting Native American music and three carved bald eagles for legs. In 2010, the Shanghai World Expo presented another creation, featuring ornate wooden peacocks and replicas of Chinese paintings, which is now the world’s most expensive piano, costing nearly $2 million. A few years later, it produced a Fibonacci-inspired design featuring the iconic spiral of the mathematical pattern for its 600,000th piece embedded in the wing cover.

But more recently, Steinway has been known for technological innovations. A few years ago, it developed a self-playing grand piano called the Spirio, which certainly looks like a regular piano, except it is connects to a digital tablet that brings up a library of songs. These pianos accounted for almost a third of Steinway’s sales in 2021, according to the company in its prospectus. A new feature was unveiled in October that allows the self-playing pianos to emulate live-streamed performances from other Spirios anywhere on Earth in real-time – meaning a concert taking place around the world becomes music played by the Steinway flows into your living room.

According to the company, “The Steinway piano was the instrument of choice for approximately 97% of concert pianists when performing with orchestras around the world during the 2018-2019 concert season,” which was the last full season before the pandemic. All of these musicians, it was said, independently owned Steinways. The company had revenue of $538 million and profit of $59 million last year, up 13% year over year. In the coming years, the company expects significant growth in China, the largest piano market in the world.

Steinway is currently owned by billionaire John Paulson. In 2018, China’s state-owned China Poly Group made a $1 billion bid to buy the piano maker, but was turned down.