Ximalaya, is an audio platform offering podcasts, audiobooks, and music. It’s being bought out by music company Tecent Music.
Tecent Music is China’s biggest music platform. They’re looking to expand by buying rivals, Ximalaya for USD $2.4 billion between both cash and stock. This will mean they then own all audio, podcast and audiobook content on the platform.
The music giants will be paying USD $1.26 billion in cash, and the rest, will be a 5.2% share of it’s class A ordinary shares. These are a specific type of shares that offer some form of ownership over a company, but they do come with responsibility.
A further 0.37% of shares will be given to Ximalaya’s founding investors. With this deal, Ximalaya aren’t faded into the dark, they will be able to restructure existing businesses. It’s somewhat of a merge, despite Tecent being the overall owners.
All business partnerships and current contracts will be honoured, so there will be no need for concern from those who are already working with the music brand. It seems this is the start Ximalaya needed. After being founded in 2012, they have had their struggles.
They failed their first few attempts to go public and then filed for a US initial public offering in 2021, submitting three applications to the Hong Kong stock exchange later on. These acts were all brushed under the carpet at a later stage.
Within Ximalaya’s 2024 report to the Hong Kong exchange, they said their profits had been up for five consecutive quarters from the end of 2023. They had an annual revenue of 6.16 billion yuan, which is USD $857 million.
