Warner Music Group did well on its first day trading as a public company.
The biggest U.S. listing so far in 2020 debuted pretty good on Nasdaq, as Warner Music Group Corp’s WMG.O stock popped 8% on its Nasdaq debut on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Now, the company has increased the offering to 77 million class A shares at $25 per share, valuing it at $12.75 billion, according to MBW’s calculations, based on details contained within Warner’s SEC filings. It had initially proposed to sell 70 million shares at a target range of $23-$26 per share.
After the world’s third-largest recording label sold shares in its $1.9-billion initial public offering towards the higher end of its target, all eyes were set on seeing this debut, and it did not dissapoint.
“We concluded that there was sufficient market momentum. Without ever trying to time the market this looked like a good time to go,” Warner Chief Executive Stephen Cooper said in an interview, per Reuters.
According to Investors.com, music industry analyst Mark Mulligan told the Hollywood Reporter the U.S. is “returning to some form of socio-economic normality” which means there “is good logic” to having the IPO now. “With what is going on in the U.S. right now, there may be more impactful dislocations to the U.S. economy than Covid. But assuming that does not get to the scale where it spooks the markets, we are entering a post-Covid phase,” he said.
