Spotify Files for $1 Billion IPO

Update 2: Spotify plans to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange on April 3rd, Bloomberg reports.

Update: On Wednesday, Spotify officially filed for an initial public offering of up to $1 billion with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Swedish company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange using the ticker SPOT.

Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming service with 71 million paying subscribers as of December 31st, 2017, according to the filing. Apple Music, the company’s closest competitor, has roughly half that number, per CNBC. The filing showed a positive year-over-year profit margin beginning in 2015 as well as a steep loss of $1.5 billion in 2017.  

“We set out to reimagine the music industry and to provide a better way for both artists and consumers to benefit from the digital transformation of the music industry,” the company said in the filing. “Spotify was founded on the belief that music is universal and that streaming is a more robust and seamless access model that benefits both artists and music fans.”

Spotify’s last valuation was at $8.4 billion when it raised a financing round of $400 million in 2015. Last December, the company filed confidential IPO documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, signaling that it was planning to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange, per Axios.

By filing in private, businesses are able to gauge interest from investors before going public. In the direct listing method, demand alone establishes a stock’s price, bypassing the usual route of hiring investment bankers to set a price. CNBC previously reported that Spotify planned to list on the New York Stock Exchange and the public offering could value the company up to $20 billion.

In December, as the streaming service explored going public, Spotify had an estimated valuation of $19 billion, Reuters reported. 

A rep for Spotify declined to comment to Rolling Stone.

News of the impending IPO was marred when Wixen Music Publishing revealed they had filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Spotify, accusing the company of streaming thousands of songs without compensation. The legal action follows similar lawsuits filed against Spotify by publishing companies and songwriters claiming that Spotify under-compensates songs’ rights holders. As a result of the lawsuit, Spotify will likely need to “add a new risk factor” ahead of its IPO filing, Axios reports.