Tencent Music Entertainment logo is seen displayed on a smartphone.
Shares in Chinese music streaming leader Tencent Music Entertainment rose 21.6% Monday morning (Jan. 19) on news it will acquire Lazy Audio, a Chinese-owned service with spoken word content such as audiobooks and podcasts, for RMB 2.7 billion ($417 million). The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021.
At Monday’s high point of $27.00, Tencent Music’s market capitalization was $45.4 billion. That’s well behind Spotify’s $61 billion but still among the most valuable publicly traded media tech companies in the world. The stock ended Tuesday at $26.86, another high closing price in a 88.4% upswing since Oct. 13. Tencent owns China’s most popular music streaming apps -- QQ Music, Kogou Music and Kuwu Music -- and the karaoke app WeSing. It was spun off from Chinese tech giant Tencent Corp. in December 2018, raising $1.1 billion in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.