China's Tencent Music makes NYSE debut

Tencent Music Entertainment, a Chinese music streaming giant, rang the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) opening bell on Wednesday in celebration of its initial public offering (IPO).

Cussion Kar Shun Pang, CEO of Tencent Music Entertainment, (center) rings the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as the Chinese music-streaming service launches its IPO on December 12, 2018 in New York City. Tencent Music priced its IPO shares late Tuesday at $13 per American depository share. [Photo: Getty Images/Spencer Platt]

The company, trading under the ticker symbol of "TME," announced its IPO of 82 million American depositary shares (ADSs), at a price to the public of 13 U.S. dollars per ADS for a total offering size of approximately 1.1 billion dollars.

Each ADS represents two Class A ordinary shares of the company.

Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are the lead sponsors of the deal.

Tencent Music started trading at 14.10 U.S. dollars per share on Wednesday, climbing 8.77 percent from its pricing, and was traded at 14.14 dollars apiece around midday.

The IPO is the fourth largest among Chinese firms listed in the United States this year by deal value, behind video streaming platform iQiyi, online group discounter Pinduoduo and electric vehicle maker NIO Inc..

Tencent Music owns streaming apps QQ Music, Kugou, Kuwo and karaoke app WeSing, with over 800 million total monthly active users (MAUs) in the third quarter of 2018.

The company offers more in the way of socially interactive services that makes it profitable. The platform reported a profit of 394 million dollars in the first nine months of this year from 114 million dollars in the same period in 2017, according to its prospectus.

The fund raised will be used mainly to expand and enhance Tencent Music's content offerings, service development, selling and marketing, potential strategic investments as well as other general corporate purposes, said the company.