China's biggest streaming-music service reportedly prices its US IPO at the low end of its range

Tencent music

Tencent Music Entertainment reportedly priced its initial public offering at $13, the low end of its range.
The company previously said American Depository Receipts would price between $13 and $15, helping it raise as much as $1.2 billion.
Shares will debut for trading in the US on Wednesday.
The IPO was initially scheduled for October 18, but was postponed due to stock-market volatility.

Tencent Music Entertainment on Tuesday priced its initial public offering at $13 per American Depository Receipt, the low end of its range, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter. Shares will debut for trading in the US on Wednesday.

The China-based streaming-music service backed by tech giant Tencent previously said the IPO would price in the range of $13 to $15 per ADR, helping it raise as much as $1.2 billion.

The IPO was initially scheduled for October 18, but the offering was postponed over fears that the brutal sell-off that wreaked havoc on markets in October and November would affect its pricing. Tencent Music was expected to have a $2 billion fundraising target, according to Reuters.

Tencent Music operates several popular music brands in China — including QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo and WeSing — and had more than 800 million unique monthly active users in the second quarter of 2018, according to a filing.

For the year ended December 31, 2017, Tencent Music said it earned 1.32 billion Chinese yuan ($199 million) on revenue of 10.99 billion Chinese yuan ($1.66 billion).

The company also said it generated a profit of 2.11 billion Chinese yuan ($320 million) in the first half of this year, almost three times as much as its 732 million Chinese yuan profit during the same period in 2017.

For comparison, Spotify, which went public in April, said it had a net loss of 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in 2017, on revenue of 4.09 billion euros ($5 billion). Spotify was reportedly valued at $19 billion in the private markets prior to its IPO. It is now worth about $32 billion.

Tencent Music will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TME."

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