NEW YORK - Warner Music Corp’s stock price surged 8% after the recording label raised US$1.9 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq Stock Market on Wednesday (3/6).
Warner Music’s IPO is the biggest US stock market listing so far in 2020, and is widely regarded as a sign of recovery for the US IPO market which has been heavily affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
“We concluded that there was sufficient market momentum. Without ever trying to time the market this looked like a good time to go,” Warner CEO Stephen Cooper said on Wednesday as quoted by Reuters.
In its IPO the company offered as many as 77 million class A shares at US$25 per share, having initially planned to sell 70 million shares at US$23-26 per share. Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley are among the underwriters.
Following the IPO, Mr Cooper said, Warner will be equipped to make further acquisitions. Its recorded music streaming revenue in April hiked 12% thanks to a number of high-profile new releases.
Warner, the world’s third-largest recording label behind Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, is home to some of the most popular and commercially successful artists including Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran.
It postponed its IPO by a day as the music industry observed #BlackOutTuesday by pausing operations for a day on Tuesday (2/6) as a show of solidarity against racism as large-scale demonstrations sweep across major US cities after the death of black man George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer. (MS)