Earlier this year, MBW revealed that Sony had sold 50% of its shares in Spotify for a sum we reasoned was in the region of $750m.
Now we know exactly how much Sony banked, thanks to a financial update within the company’s fiscal Q1 results released today (July 31).
Sony Corp says that, in the first quarter of this year (calendar Q2), its music company sold a portion of Spotify shares for ‘an aggregate consideration of 82.616bn Yen (USD $768 million) in cash’.
The sale of these shares, offset by costs to be paid to its artists and distributed labels and ‘other transaction costs which directly related to the gains recognized from the Spotify shares’, resulted in a net pre-tax realized gain of 53.870bn Yen (USD $501 million).
Sony says its remaining shares in Spotify, retained as of June 30, 2018, have a gross fair value of 95.275bn Yen ($862 million).
The major has previously announced that it will overlook unrecouped balances when it comes to paying artists their share of these proceeds.
Those artist checks are due to be sent out before the end of August.
Spotify’s shares closed on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday (July 30) at $179.79, down 5.09% on their opening price.
That resulted in Spotify posting a market cap valuation of $33.18bn at the bell.
Spotify announced last week that it now has over 83 million subscribers paying for its service worldwide.Music Business Worldwide
