[ad_1]
A Tencent Music Entertainment booth at a Beijing convention in May 2017. The U.S. IPO could value the business in excess of $25 billion.
Photo:
china stringer network/Reuters
Tencent Music Entertainment Group filed to go public in the U.S. on Tuesday, kicking off what could be one of the biggest initial public offerings ever for a technology company.
The China-based music streaming service, part of internet giant
Tencent Holdings
Ltd.
, said it has applied to list its American depositary shares under the symbol TME. It hasn’t chosen a listing exchange yet, people familiar with the matter said, and it mentioned both the New York Stock Exchange and the
Nasdaq
Global Market in its filing Tuesday.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Tencent Music was preparing an IPO and was expected to list in the U.S.
Tencent Music, which operates the popular music app known as QQ Music and others, recently had 800 million unique monthly active users. It was created in mid-2016 after Tencent Holdings bought a controlling stake in China Music Corp. and combined it with Tencent’s existing streaming business.
A Tencent Music listing would be one of the largest IPOs of the year and is expected to raise billions in proceeds, people familiar with the matter have said. The IPO could value the business in excess of $25 billion, which would make it one of the biggest technology IPOs ever, according to Dealogic. That doesn’t include fellow music-streaming giant Spotify Technology SA, which didn’t raise money in its public offering but was valued at about $29.5 billion at its first trade in April. Spotify is now worth about $32 billion.
Tencent Music’s valuation has risen sharply—it was valued at about $12.5 billion when it swapped stakes with Spotify in late 2017. Still, pre-IPO valuations can fluctuate until a company prices its shares.
Tencent Music showed sharp growth in its filing on Tuesday, revealing a business that generated $1.66 billion of revenue in 2017, more than double the prior year. It posted a 2017 profit of $199 million, up from roughly $2 million of profit the prior year.
Write to Maureen Farrell at [email protected]
Source link
