M17 Entertainment, the Taiwan-based digital media company backed by corporates Yahoo Japan and Media Nusantara Citra (MCN), has failed to list on the New York Stock Exchange, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
The company priced more than 7.5 million American depositary shares at $8 each yesterday morning, for a $60.1m initial public offering, and was expected to list later in the day but has still not started trading as of the time of writing.
Reasons for the failure to go public are unclear, with TechCrunch noting that a scheduled interview with M17’s chief executive was cancelled at the last minute.
The company had originally targeted $115m in proceeds and is suffering significant losses, losing $24.8m in the first three months of 2018 and retaining just $31.4m in cash and equivalents.
Formed through a 2016 merger, M17 owns swipe-based dating and networking apps Paktor and Goodnight, and 17 Media, a livestreaming platform that had more than 33 million registered users by the end of March this year.
Paktor’s investors included media group MCN, internet company Yahoo Japan’s YJ Capital unit, Vertex Asia Fund, Global Grand Leisure, Majuven, Convergence Ventures, Golden Equator Capital, Sebrina Holdings and K2 Global. They had put in $52.5m before the merger.
LeSports Innovation Fund, a subsidiary of online streaming platform LeSports, supplied $23m to 17 Media in 2016, after Infinity Venture Partners and entrepreneur Sicong Wang had injected $10m in series A capital in 2015.
M17 secured $40m in an August 2017 round led by Infinity Venture Partners that featured Yahoo Japan, the Singapore state-owned Vertex Ventures, Majuven, Golden Summit Capital and KTB Ventures.
M17’s largest shareholders are Master Plan Worldwide, a vehicle owned by chairman Jeff Huang (17.1%); Dragon Alexander, which is owned by CEO Joseph Phua (13.5%); Vertex (12.1%), Infinity (9.1%) and KTB (5.7%).
None of the corporates feature among the list of large shareholders.
Citigroup Global Markets, Deutsche Bank Securities, Daiwa Capital Markets America and Mizuho Securities USA are the underwriters for the offering.