China-based audio streaming platform developer Ximalaya has filed for an initial public offering in the United States that would give internet and gaming group Tencent the chance to exit.
Ximalaya operates an online podcasting platform with some 250 million monthly active users, and the filing comes after it recorded a $92.7m net loss in 2020 from nearly $621m in revenue.
The company has set a placeholder target of $100m and is set to float on the New York Stock Exchange. It plans to put 30% of the IPO proceeds into technology development, 25% each into content and marketing, and 20% into strategic investments and acquisitions.
Tencent and its China Literature subsidiary each supplied $25m in funding for Ximalaya in February this year according to the IPO filing, after growth equity firm General Atlantic had invested $10m in December 2020.
Tencent also participated in Ximalaya’s last publicly disclosed funding round, a $580m round in 2018 that also featured investment bank Goldman Sachs and General Atlantic, valuing it at $3.5bn post-money.
China Literature had supplied an amount later revealed to be $50m for the company in 2015, following $11.5m in series A funding from SIG China, part of technology and trading firm Susquehanna International Group, in addition to Sierra Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) the year before.
China Creation Ventures, WestSummit Capital and China Broadband Capital were also among Ximalaya’s earlier investors.
Co-founder, chairman and CEO Jianjun Yu owns 17.2% of the company’s shares while another co-founder, Yuxin Chen, has 13.5%. An entity known as Xingwang Investment holds 10.7%, growth equity firm Trustbridge Partners 7.5% and Tencent 5.4%.
Goldman Sachs (Asia), Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities and China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Securities are the representatives of the underwriters in the IPO.
