On Tuesday, French music streaming service Deezer suffered a nearly 30 percent stock price tumble during its first day on the public market. Now, with the company’s initial week of trading in the books, shares have officially parted with a total of 40 percent of their value.
Deezer’s long-discussed stock-market debut came to fruition via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger – the same process that music industry businesses including Anghami and Reservoir Media have used to list their own shares. But entities like Triller and SeatGeek have shelved their SPAC plans as of late amid widespread market turmoil and a downturn specifically in the blank-check sphere.
The points appear to be fueling the stock-value woes of Deezer. Moreover, some in the industry have expressed disappointment with the present userbase and subscribership of the Access Industries-owned platform, which communicated that it has 16 million MAUs and 9.6 million paid accounts. Notwithstanding Deezer’s global operations and efforts to attract users in emerging markets, almost 72 percent of these subscribers are concentrated in Brazil and France.
Compounding the difficulties, investors appear generally skeptical of profit-challenged tech plays at the moment, including entertainment streaming services like Netflix and Spotify. SPOT declined to around $95 last week – not far from its record low of $89.03, which arrived in May, but well beneath the close to $400-per-share price delivered in early 2021, after The Joe Rogan Experience became available exclusively on the platform.
Meanwhile, Anghami stock is down almost 60 percent since 2022’s start, compared to a nearly 30 percent falloff for Tencent Music stock; the latter percentage reflects TME’s approximately eight percent improvement during the past month.
And for further reference, other music industry companies’ year-to-date stock-price dips include 41.14 percent for Warner Music Group (currently $25.28 per share), 14.09 percent for Reservoir ($6.89 per share), 30.36 percent for Live Nation ($84.36 per share), and about 14.5 percent for Universal Music Group (€20.95/$21.33 per share).
Bearing in mind the figures, Deezer stock started at $8.66 (€8.50) per share on the Euronext Amsterdam on Tuesday and finished at $5.19 (€5.10) per share today.
The even 40 percent decrease has reduced the business’s market cap to roughly $586.85 million (€576.30 million) – substantially beneath execs’ $1.1 billion pre-listing target. Time will tell whether the stock can halt its slide (shares fell by another 7.3 percent on Friday) before reversing the losses in the long term.
Deezer higher-ups previously set an ambitious 2025 revenue goal of $1.12 billion (€1 billion) for their company, touting the “international network with media and entertainment companies in the key target countries” purportedly possessed by the SPAC with which it merged.