Prince Alwaleed-backed Deezer eyes IPO within 18 months

Deezer, the music streaming platform partly funded by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, is planning to go public within 18 months, depending on market circumstances, its chief executive said.

“Going public is an opportunity… it is something that we will consider in the next 12 to 18 months,” CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht told The National.

“We know financial markets love music streaming companies as you saw in the case of Spotify, which went public in April 2018. As a company, we are of the right size… we will raise an IPO, if everything goes well,” Albrecht said, without disclosing further details.

Founded in France in 2007, Deezer entered the Middle East and North Africa in October last year. It has 14 million monthly active users in 185 countries and offers more than 56 million tracks and other content on a range of mobile devices.

“We started from zero last year and we are aiming [for] 4 million registrations to our service in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA),” Albrecht said, who expects maximum growth coming out of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the coming months.