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ByteDance
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TikTok owner ByteDance offers to buy back shares from employees at 7 per cent premium over previous round

  • The firm has offered to purchase shares from staff at US$170.81 each, up nearly 7 per cent from late last year
  • While its revenues continue to grow, ByteDance is grappling with new pressure from US lawmakers to divest TikTok or face a ban

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The ByteDance logo seen at the company’s office building in Shanghai, China. Photo: Reuters
Coco Fengin Beijing

ByteDance, China’s most valuable unicorn and the owner of TikTok, has started a new round of share buy-backs for its global employees that price the equity higher than the previous round, according to two people familiar with the matter.

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The Beijing-based company has offered to purchase shares from staff at US$170.81 each, up nearly 7 per cent from US$160 late last year. For former employees, the buy-back rate is US$145.19, around 13 per cent higher than US$128 in the previous round.

A ByteDance representative confirmed the numbers without elaborating.

The more generous buy-back plan suggests that the company’s valuation is growing in the private market along with its revenues and the popularity of its apps.

Founded by entrepreneur Zhang Yiming in 2012, ByteDance remains China’s highest-valued start-up, thanks to the mass appeal of its short video app TikTok in the US and other international markets, as well as the domestic version, Douyin.
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As a privately held company, ByteDance does not disclose financial data. But according to reports by The Wall Street Journal and tech news site The Information, ByteDance’s revenue in the third quarter last year soared roughly 43 per cent year on year to US$30.9 billion. Total sales in the first nine months of the year rose 40 per cent to US$84.4 billion.

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