Spotify looking for some Christmas joy after rough week

Spotify will be hoping for some holiday cheer from investors as the streaming giant looks to rebound from a bruising week on the markets.

The 10-year-old tech firm closed slightly up at $125.68 on Friday, having dipped to an all-time day-end low of $125.55 at the close of trading the previous day. For the first time since its flotation on the New York Stock Exchange back in April, Spotify’s market cap has slipped below $23 billion.

That’s well down on Spotify’s $165.90 opening price on day one of its public life back in April 3, and a different planet from its intraday trading high of $196.28 in late July, for a bulging market cap of $35.3 billion.

Do the math: that’s $12 billion-plus wiped in less than five months.

Spotify’s not alone. Markets have been smacked in recent weeks over a range of economic issues, from the uncertainty over Brexit, violent protests in France and a looming full-scale trade war between the U.S and China. Tech stocks, in particular, have been stung. And Tencent Music isn’t immune.

The Chinese music streaming service Tencent Music made its long awaited debut last week, raising $1.1 billion in what was one of the largest U.S. public offerings of 2018. Its stock sizzled at the start, leaping by almost 10% during its first day of trading on the NYSE, for a market cap north of $21 billion. By week’s end, TME was trading at $12.81 per share, down on its opening price of $14.10 on Friday.

A few treacherous days (or weeks) of trading won’t trouble execs at Tencent Music. The company, which boasts 800 million monthly users across its streaming platforms (of which only 23 million are paid subscribers) is playing a long game. “The fact that Tencent still chose to do its IPO in a downturn environment, and was okay with a moderate return, indicates that the company is being run well with its executive’s eyes looking far beyond the next quarter. Doesn’t sound much like a U.S. tech company, does it?” writes Bobby Owsinski for Forbes.

Don’t rule out a big play between the two partners sometime, somehow. “The time isn’t right currently,” notes Owsinski, “but don’t rule out Tencent as a potential buyer of Spotify at some point, no matter how unlikely that might seem at the moment.”

Read more here.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.