TENCENT NOW CONTROLS 10% OF UNIVERSAL, 9% OF SPOTIFY… AND NEARLY 2% OF WARNER MUSIC GROUP
On Friday (June 12), spotted via an SEC filing that Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) had acquired 4 million Class A shares in Warner Music Group in a transaction worth around $100m. Those 4m shares equated to 5.2% of outstanding Class A shares, and 0.8% of Warner Music Group as an entire company. We’ve subsequently learned, via an additional filing also lodged with the SEC on Friday (see below), that China’s Tencent Holdings – the majority owner of TME – has itself acquired a separate stake in Warner of the same size as TME’s (4 million shares / 0.8% of Warner’s company). Tencent Holdings did so via its 100% subsidiary, Huang River Investment Ltd. Both of these transactions took place on Wednesday, June 3, the day Warner floated a portion of its company on the Nasdaq. And both of them were worth circa $100m. This means that the Wall Street Journal’s earlier report suggesting that Tencent was considering a $200m acquisition of WMG shares was right on the money. It ...