TENCENT MUSIC FILES FOR IPO; WMG AND SONY ARE IN

Tencent Music Entertainment filed to go public in the U.S. on Tuesday in what is expected to be one of the biggest tech IPOs ever. The SEC filing, which had been telegraphed by parent company Tencent Holdings, brings a company with 800 million active users in China to Wall Street.

MBW reports that, according to a note in the F-1 prospectus, both WMG and Sony Music have acquired shares in TME for an aggregate cash consideration of approximately $200m. In exchange for their money, the two music groups have split just over 68m ordinary shares in TME between them. UMG isn’t mentioned in the prospectus.

TME hasn’t chosen a listing exchange yet, sources told The Wall Street Journal, but whether it opts to list on the NYSE or NASDAQ, the IPO will be one of the year’s largest and is expected to raise billions in proceeds.

The IPO could value TME north of $25 billion, compared to Spotify’s $29.5 billion valuation when it went public via a direct listing in April. Since then, Spotify’s value has risen to around $32b.

TME was valued at about $12.5b in late 2017 when it swapped stakes with Spotify, which has a 9.5% stake in the Chinese streaming colossus.