Spotify‘s share price is flying.
Following the firm’s announcement of its Q3 2024 results on Tuesday (November 12), SPOT’s stock price jumped on the NYSE, closing at an all-time high of USD $477.50 yesterday (November 14).
It settled back down to $458.32 at the close of trading today (November 15), but that was still enough to give Spotify a massive market cap of $92 billion.
Unsurprisingly, some of Spotify’s top stockholder executives have capitalized on this market cap valuation growth by cashing out portions of their shares.
Said executives include Spotify co-founder and CEO, Daniel Ek.
According to an SEC filing spotted by MBW, Ek sold 75,000 Spotify shares earlier today (November 15), enabling him to cash out $35.8 million.
The move is the fifth time in the past 18 months that Ek has cashed in some of his Spotify stock:
- In July 2023, Ek sold 675,000 shares for USD $100 million in proceeds;
- In October 2023, he sold 400,000 shares for $64.2 million in proceeds;
- In February this year, Ek sold 250,000 shares for $57.5 million in proceeds;
- And in April this year, Ek sold sold 400,000 shares for $118.8 million in proceeds.
Across these five transactions (today’s included), Ek has cashed out approximately $376.3 million in Spotify shares since last summer.
The biggest single cash-out of SPOT stock, though, hasn’t come from Ek – it’s come from his co-founder in Spotify.
A separate SEC filing spotted by MBW and registered this week confirms that Rosello Company Ltd sold 959,762 shares on Wednesday (November 13).
That sale generated a whopping USD $383.75 million in proceeds for Rosello.
Rosello is a Cyprus-registered holding company owned by Almatea, a Luxembourg-based firm whose sole shareholder is Spotify co-founder (and the firm’s former Chairman), Martin Lorentzon.
Update: Lorentzon/Rosello previously cashed out $81 million in Spotify stock on June 7 this year, plus a further $5.7 million on June 10, and an additional $85.8 million on July 27.
That’s over $525 million cashed out by Lorentzon within the space of five months. Nice work if you can get it.
Daniel Ek was the single largest shareholder in Spotify at the close of 2023, with ownership/proxy ownership of 30.86 million ordinary shares in the company, or 15.6% of the total, according to SEC filings.
However, Ek held these shares via his D.G.E Investments vehicle, and amongst the 30.86 million are 16.632 million shares ultimately owned by Tencent Holdings that Ek/D.G.E represents via “irrevocable proxy”.
Discounting these Tencent shares, Ek’s ultimate personal ownership of ordinary shares in SPOT as of December 2023, then, was 14.224 million shares (including warrants), which – in terms of Spotify’s current share price – would be cumulatively worth a shade over USD $6.5 billion at the time of publication of this article.
Spotify is on course for its first ever profitable year.
According to the firm’s Q3 results filing (and its Q4 forecast), it expects to post an annual operating profit of USD $1.5 billion in the calendar year of 2024.
Spotify’s global Premium Subscriber base grew to just over quarter-of-a-billion (252 million) paying users in Q3.
That was up 12% YoY, and up by 6 million net subscribers on the 246 million subs that SPOT counted at the end of the prior quarter (Q2 2024).
The company’s 6 million net subscriber additions in Q3 were 1 million ahead of guidance.Music Business Worldwide