After a sequence of earlier makes an attempt that didn’t pan out, TikTok rival Triller is lastly a publicly traded firm.
Having accomplished a merger with Hong Kong-focused monetary providers firm AGBA, the brand new Triller Group Inc. debuted on the NASDAQ trade on Wednesday (October 16).
As of mid-day Jap time, Triller Group’s inventory (ticker image ILLR) was buying and selling at $4.45 per share, down about 20% from its opening worth of $5.60. Shares had spiked on opening to as excessive as $6.52 earlier than pulling again.
Its present share worth provides Triller Group a market capitalization of round $705 million – properly in need of the $4 billion that Triller and AGBA focused once they introduced the merger final spring.
The brand new Triller Group operates two fundamental companies: Triller Corp. and AGBA Group Holding Restricted.
Below the phrases of the all-stock merger, Triller shareholders obtained 70% of the mixed firm’s excellent widespread inventory, whereas AGBA shareholders obtained 30%.
The itemizing marks the fruits of a number of years of efforts by Triller to go public, which included a proposed SPAC merger with SeaChange Worldwide, focusing on an preliminary valuation of $5 billion, in 2022.
When that fell via, the corporate then aimed for a direct itemizing, in what it stated can be “the biggest creator IPO in historical past.”
That, too, didn’t materialize, and the corporate launched one more bid in 2023 earlier than asserting the AGBA merger in April 2024.
Below the plan introduced at the moment, Triller co-founder Bobby Sarnevesht was slated to function CEO of Triller Corp., whereas Bob Diamond would function Group Chairman and AGBA Chairman Wing-Fai Ng was slated to be Group CEO. Extra lately, the businesses introduced that Sarnevesht would additionally function a Director of the merged firm.
In a press release on Tuesday, Triller Group stated it might reveal particulars about “future management, technique and targets” on October 22.
Each of the companies that comprise Triller Group confirmed indicators of monetary pressure previous to the merger.
AGBA, a Hong Kong-focused monetary providers firm that claims 400,000 prospects, reported a 55.8% YoY drop in revenues within the first half of 2024, pushed by a steep drop in commissions, which it attributed to “the financial recession [in China] and outward migration in Hong Kong.”
Within the years earlier than the merger, Triller was hit with a sequence of lawsuits over non-payment of licensing charges for music on its platform, together with a 2022 swimsuit from Sony Music, accusing the corporate of utilizing “tens of millions of {dollars}” of music with out authorization. That swimsuit was settled in 2023, however Triller then confronted one other lawsuit, this one from Common Music Group over allegedly unpaid music licensing charges.
In an SEC submitting earlier this yr, upfront of its deliberate IPO, Triller revealed that it owed music rightsholders $23.6 million in unpaid charges. The corporate, which had raised greater than $420 million from buyers, had lower than $1 million in money and money equivalents available.
As a part of the merger plan agreed to by shareholders in September, Triller Group has put aside 50 million shares of the corporate to be “utilized towards future settlement of sure Triller authorized and monetary obligations.”
On the present market worth, these shares are price $222.5 million.Music Enterprise Worldwide
