Sony sells half its Spotify stock, reportedly worth US$750 million

Sony has sold approximately 50% of its shares in Spotify during the Swedish streaming company’s first month on the New York Stock Exchange, generating around US$750 million in the process.

The record company had owned 5.7% of Spotify’s stock, totalling 10,164,560 shares before Spotify’s successful IPO at the start of April in which it gained a market valuation of $26.6 billion.

Sony had reportedly sold 17.2% of its shares since the company went public, and now MBW has via Sony’s public filing listed last Friday that the company has further cashed in a much larger portion of its stock.

Investors were told last week that Sony had sold “approximately half of the shares we owned from the listing date until now”.

According to the filing, “Sony owned 5.707% of Spotify’s shares (5.082% on a fully diluted basis) at the time of the public listing, approximately half of which have been sold to date.

“Due to the public listing and the subsequent sale of a portion of such shares owned by Sony, Sony expects to record an unrealized valuation gain for the shares Sony continues to hold after the listing and a realized gain for the shares sold, net of the estimated amount to be shared with its artists and distributed labels.

“The sum of the unrealized valuation gain (net) and the gain on the sale of shares (net) to be recorded for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2019 is expected to be approximately 100 billion yen in total, or around $910 million.”

The filing also reiterated Sony’s recent statement that it would share the proceeds from the sale of Spotify shares with its artists and labels.

Spotify’s share price has since hit an all time high of US$163.90 as (of May 1.)