Aussie music service Guvera lodges prospectus ahead of IPO, in effort to raise $80m
Australian music streaming firm, Guvera, has confirmed it will go ahead with an initial public offering (IPO) with the company set to have a market capitalisation of $588m.
Speculation that Guvera would list on the ASX has been rife for more than 12 months, with the company now having lodged its prospectus with securities regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) as part of an $80m capital fundraising.
Guvera is offering 80m shares at an issue price of $1.00 per share, with a minimum share subscription of $40m. It also has the ability to accept over-subscriptions for a further 20m shares.
According to the prospectus, Guvera co-founders Claes Loberg and Darren Herft will retain 11.63% and 7.87% of the IPO’ed business which, according to the prospectus documents, lost $29.7m in the financial year of 2014 and $80.7m in 2015. The company has so far this financial year lost $55.7m.
Phil Quartararo, chairman of Guvera, said in a statement on the IPO: “Primarily focused on mobile digital advertising, Guvera’s revenue model replicates that of a major social media platform. The provision of music is a mass-market service and I believe Guvera is the best-positioned music company to take advantage of this mobile advertising explosion”.
Guvera is seeking to challenge the likes of music streaming services Pandora and Spotify, and noted that globally it had reached 14m users across 10 countries.
Guvera was founded in Queensland in 2008 in an attempt to combat the mass consumption of illegal music online. Guvera’s focus is to provide users with a legal way to access music through its brand-funded model. Guvera was officially launched in 2010 as a digital music platform.
Beginning as a web-based download service available in Australia, Guvera transitioned to become a multi-platform streaming business that has expanded globally and now focuses on high-growth, emerging markets such as India and Indonesia.
The IPO offering closes on July 8 and if successful, the company will list on July 18.
They are not projected to lose 55.7 million for 2016. They lost 55.7 million in the 1st half of the 2016 financial year. In the prospectus it says ‘HY2016″ not ‘FY2016″.
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Thanks for flagging corporal punishment.
Will correct.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
I’m speechless that any company which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars since 2010, with very low chance of achieving profitability, has the balls to seek more funding via an IPO. The company is hinging a turn-around on a brand engagement patent and an ongoing focus on developing markets. The contribution of both items to engineer a turn-around is suspect. One more point: the prospectus details 14m global users, up from 1m since 2014; that’s 13m additional users in less than two years and no details on user engagement! To paraphrase Mark Ritson, utter BS.
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Amazing this business is still alive. Has anyone recouped any of their investment? Plenty of funds have been sunk in.
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Maybe Mumbrella should approach some of the advertisers listed for comment. Would love to hear a partners opinion.
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