Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s IPO has finally arrived.
The company has officially started trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TME as of today (December 12).
China’s TME, home to three of the country’s leading music streaming services; QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo has raised around $1.1bn, having offered 82,000,000 shares at $13.
Its IPO market valuation on the NYSE was $21.3bn.
UPDATE: Tencent Music (TME) went on to open at $14.10/share on the NYSE, and rose 10.6% during the morning’s trade.
Tencent Music was previously expected to float at a valuation of $29bn to $31bn when initial reports out of China suggested that its IPO date would come in October.
An IPO registration document (Form F-1) was filed with the SEC on October 2 which showed TME had $512m in gross profits for H1 2018. The October IPO, however, never arrived – with reports in November then suggesting that the US flotation was likely to be pushed back until early 2019, due to weak performance of US-based tech stocks.
A form was subsequently filed with the SEC on December 3, stating that TME’s IPO would definitely take place before the end of 2018.
TME, which is majority-owned (58.1%) by Chinese media/entertainment giant Tencent, counted over 800 million total unique Monthly Active Users in Q3 2018 according to SEC filings.
Today’s offering is expected to close on December 14, 2018, subject to customary closing conditions.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated are acting as joint bookrunners of this offering.Music Business Worldwide
