Seven years after its IPO collapsed, Deezer is in talks to to head public once more – by way of a SPAC

Deezer, the rival song streaming provider to the likes of Spotify and Apple Tune, is reportedly taking some other run at going public.

Paris-headquartered Deezer’s remaining strive at a public checklist fell aside in 2015.

The corporate introduced an IPO strive at the Paris inventory change in October that 12 months, however slammed the brakes at the procedure simply 3 days earlier than its closing date, mentioning tough “marketplace prerequisites”.

Nowadays, the ones marketplace prerequisites glance reasonably other: In 2015, in step with up to date IFPI figures, the worldwide recorded song trade generated $14.7 billion yearly, of which simply $2.8 billion (19%) got here from streaming. In 2021, the worldwide recorded song trade generated $25.9 billion yearly, of which $16.9 billion (65%) got here from streaming.

Deezer going public in 2022, then, doubtlessly represents a possibility for the French platform to understand worth from the explosion in expansion of the worldwide song streaming marketplace over the last decade.

One particular person who could also be in particular prepared at the realization of that worth is Len Blavatnik, the founding father of Get right of entry to Industries.

Get right of entry to, the majority-owner of Warner Tune Workforce, greater its stake in Deezer in 2016 to take a controlling percentage within the song streaming corporate.

Monetary knowledge from France these days means that Len Blavatnik, as a Recommended Proprietor, for my part controls a 28.95% stake in Deezer.

Different modern day shareholders in Deezer come with telco corporate Orange, plus Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Conserving Corporate.

In keeping with Wall Boulevard Magazine assets, Deezer is recently nearing a deal to head public by way of a merger with a Particular Objective Acquisition Corporate (SPAC).

Who’s that SPAC? They’re going to surely be acquainted to MBW readers.

Closing summer time, we instructed you a couple of new Paris-based SPAC – I2PO – which had round $325 million in capital at its disposal, and was once subsidized via the billionaire Pinault circle of relatives’s keeping corporate.

“The price of song as we’ve noticed it rising during the last years, the trail to me is simplest upwards.”

Iris Knobloch, I2PO, talking remaining 12 months

MBW printed on the time that I2PO – dubbed the “first Ecu SPAC devoted to the leisure and recreational sector”  had a selected hobby in taking into account a merger with a song trade corporate.

Iris Knobloch, Chairwoman of the Board of Administrators and Leader Government Officer of I2PO, instructed MBW: “The price of song as we’ve noticed it rising during the last years, the trail to me is simplest upwards.”

I2PO floated at the Paris Euronext on July 20 remaining 12 months.

The WSJ now stories that Deezer and I2PO are getting nearer to agreeing a deal that may, if agreed, take Deezer public, and may well be introduced within the coming days.

The WSJ doesn’t try to put a valuation on Deezer, however right here’s a bit of potted historical past of that matter:

• Again in 2015, when it scrapped that IPO bid in Paris, paperwork urged that Deezer was once making an attempt to boost round USD $400 million;
• In 2018, Deezer privately raised $185 million from current buyers (together with Orange and Get right of entry to) plus Kingdom Conserving Corporate. That carry, mentioned Deezer, gave it a valuation of €1 billion (approx $1.1 billion in these days’s cash);
• In 2020, Deezer struck a deal with TV Azteca / Grupo Salinas in Mexico which the song streamer mentioned valued its corporate at €1.3 billion (approx US $1.4 billion)

Deezer says it has 16 million per thirty days energetic customers international.

Contemporary Midia Analysis knowledge urged that Deezer had a 2% percentage of all world song streaming subscribers on the finish of June remaining 12 months. That put Deezer’s paying target audience at round 10.5 million subs.

In Would possibly remaining 12 months, Deezer employed Jeronimo Folgueira as its new CEO. He succeeded Hans-Holger Albrecht, who had led Deezer since 2015.

Sooner than becoming a member of Deezer, Folgueira was once CEO of on-line relationship corporate Spark Networks, which is publicly traded at the NASDAQ.

In January this 12 months, Deezer introduced it had employed former Orange government Stephane Rougeot as Leader Monetary Officer and Deputy CEO.

Like Folgueira, Rougeot additionally introduced revel in of working public corporations to Deezer.

Seven years in the past remaining month, the then-CEO of then-independent label Ministry Of Sound, Lohan Presencer, memorably blasted a senior Deezer rep – along a senior government at fellow streamer Rdio – survive level at Cell International Congress in Barcelona.

Presencer mentioned: “You’re really nice guys and I’m positive you’re employed very exhausting… [but] you espouse the rhetoric of supporting the song trade when the truth is that you simply paintings for corporations who’re funded via buyers, who need to see an go out on that funding. So your function is to develop your person base to inform a tale this is such in an effort to IPO or you’ll promote.”

Presencer added: “You aren’t those making an investment in creating skill. You aren’t those signing artists.

“Our artists, our funding, our inventive neighborhood is contracting day by day on account of the loose products and services which can be in the market giving song away, with the target of an go out on the finish of it.”Tune Trade International