Warner Music Group Corp, the world’s third-largest recording label, yesterday said that its upsized initial public offering (IPO) raised US$1.93 billion, the biggest US listing so far this year.
The company increased the offering to 77 million class A shares at US$25 per share, valuing it at US$12.75 billion. It had initially proposed offering 70 million shares.
The entire offering comprises existing investors selling stock.
Warner Music, home to artists such as Cardi B, Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars, had set a target range of US$$23 to US$26 per share.
The upsized offering points to improving appetite for new issues, which came to a halt in March as stocks plunged following the global spread of COVID-19.
Warner Music had planned to price the IPO on Tuesday, but postponed by one day to mark #BlackOutTuesday, a social media event to show support for racial justice.
The music industry is seen as more resilient to weakness in the broader US economy, although Warner Music has cautioned that the pandemic has hurt physical revenue streams and delayed the release of new recordings, movies and television programs.
Warner Music, majority owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries Inc, posted net loss of US$74 million in the second quarter that ended on March 31, compared with a profit of US$67 million a year earlier. Its debt totals US$2.98 billion.
With companies and investors unable to meet in person due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Warner Music is the latest firm to complete its IPO through a virtual roadshow.
Virtual roadshows have meant that companies have been able to complete their IPOs in as little as four days.
The shorter roadshows have also served as a hedge against volatile financial markets.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained