Sony’s stake in Spotify worth $1.5bn after day one on the New York Stock Exchange

Spotify started publicly trading on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday; just before 1pm ET, its shares were valued at $165.90 – resulting in a market cap of $29.6bn. At the end of the trading day (4pm ET) that valuation slipped 10.2%, down to $149.01 per share, equivalent to a market cap of $26.5bn.

As "Music Business Worldwide" noted, this isn’t a great surprise: the unusual "direct listing" approach that Spotify took, indeed, implies that some volatility in its pricing is to be expected over the next few days.

One of the questions the industry people is asking right now: what’s happening to Universal, Warner and – particularly – Sony’s stakes? Sony is known to have owned a 5.7% stake in Spotify before first trading day - that stake would have been worth $1.68bn. But right now, with Spotify shares going down, a 5.7% stake would be worth $1.51bn.

Again, "MBW", writes that - according to sources - Sony’s stake (or a part of it) could have been sold separately as it was amongst 106m Spotify shares which were eligible to trade under the SEC’s Rule 144a. Rule 144a permits non-affiliates of a company, who have owned their shares for at least a year, to sell to qualified institutional investors.