The Music Acquisition Corporation, a music-focused blank-check company founded by former Geffen Records president and Hallwood Media founder Neil Jacobson, has officially debuted on the stock market.
On Tuesday, February 2nd, the Music Acquisition Corporation formally announced the pricing of its $200 million IPO, consisting specifically of 20 million units at $10 apiece. Each unit encompasses one of the company’s Class A shares and one-half of a warrant to purchase an additional share for $11.50. (Investors can only redeem whole warrants, however.)
The offering is set to close tomorrow, February 5th, and once the units begin trading separately, Music Acquisition stock proper will be listed as TMAC on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), with the warrants adopting the symbol TMAC WS. At the end of today’s trading hours, Music Acquisition units (TMAC.U on the NYSE) were worth $10.75 apiece.
The release announcing the IPO’s pricing indicates that Music Acquisition “may pursue an initial business combination target in any industry or geographic region.” Nevertheless, the entity “intends to focus its search for an initial business combination on businesses that are either directly or indirectly connected with the music sector,” so as to capitalize upon the experience and skillsets of its current executives.
Aside from Neil Jacobson, former Barclays managing director Todd Lowen serves as Music Acquisition’s COO, while Michael Levitt, Ben Silverman, and Tunde Balogun have seats on the company’s board.
The Music Acquisition Corporation’s $200 million IPO arrives just weeks after Atlanta Braves owner and SiriusXM majority stakeholder Liberty Media rolled out a $500 million IPO for its own “special purpose acquisition company.”
Worth noting is that Liberty Media also possesses about one-third of Live Nation and five percent of Indian music streaming platform JioSaavn. Like Music Acquisition, Liberty’s acquisition company priced its units at $10 apiece out of the gate, and each unit came with one-fifth of a warrant to purchase a share at $11.50.
In other IPO news, Tencent-backed ByteDance rival Kuaishou began preparing a more than $5 billion stock-market listing in Hong Kong late last month. The video-sharing and livestreaming platform arrived on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today – Friday morning local time – and shares quickly skyrocketed past their original value.
At the time of publishing, Kuaishou shares were hovering around $38.88 (HK$301.4), having briefly approached $45 per share earlier in the morning. Separately, Universal Music Group’s long-awaited IPO is less than 12 months away, according to the Big Three label’s Vivendi parent company, while Believe Digital is reportedly preparing a multibillion-dollar listing of its own.