TikTok owner ByteDance’s valuation has reached $400 billion based on anonymous sales by online traders, with some analysts seeing that number climb higher, according to a South China Morning Post report on Friday (Oct. 15).
ByteDance recently scrapped its plans for an initial public offering (IPO), leading to anonymous private equity trades being posted online and a “moderate” rise in the company’s valuation that dovetails with Founder Zhang Yiming’s announcement that he would step down as CEO earlier this year.
The estimates of ByteDance’s valuation come from Chinese tech media platform 36Kr, which publishes buy and sell requests from anonymous investors and then facilitates the trades. ByteDance equity trades have been the most active targets on 36Kr.
Two unnamed shareholders posted on Wednesday (Oct. 13) that they are planning to sell up to $1.1 billion in ByteDance shares, giving the company a $400 billion valuation, up $40 billion from a month earlier. Another seller valued the company at $450 billion in July, while another said ByteDance was valued at $325 billion early last month.
ByteDance also launched a recent round of employee-owned share buybacks at $132 per share, three sources told the Post, up about 5% per share from the company’s May buyback. However, that would make the company worth less than $200 billion.
Douyin, ByteDance’s short video app that is considered the Chinese version of TikTok, had 600 million daily active users as of August 2020, the latest numbers available.
Related news: TikTok Reaches 1B Monthly User Milestone
Meanwhile, TikTok passed the one billion monthly active user milestone last month, up 45% from the middle of 2020.
TikTok did not say where its one billion-plus users live or how much they view on the social media site, and did not share any information regarding age, ethnicity or other demographics, according to the Deadline report last month.
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