Opera Makes US$30-million Investment in StarMaker

Opera (NASDAQ:OPRA) announced on Monday (November 5) that it has made a US$30 million strategic investment in social media platform, StarMaker, leading to an ownership stake of 19.35 percent.

Opera, a company engaged in delivering browsers for a wide range of platforms in addition to providing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, completed investment at a pre-money valuation of US$125 million by obtaining preferred shares issued by StarMaker.

Further, the company said that it has a provision to increase its ownership to 51 percent in StarMaker by the end of 2020.

StarMaker, a social media platform focused on music, allows its users to follow their favorite musicians while letting them to create and share their own music videos. The platform has a strong presence in emerging markets like India, Indonesia and Middle East.

Through the investment, both Opera and StarMaker are set to benefit from each other’s portfolios, which the companies said would assist them in ramping up their growth and capture shared opportunities.

“StarMaker complements our existing content platform Opera News, and we look forward to take part in the company’s journey of both continued product innovation and user growth,” Frode Jacobsen, CFO of Opera, said in the release.

It was also said that Yahui Zhou, CEO of Opera, will continue to hold 65.78 percent of the equity interests in StarMaker.

While Opera is scheduled to announce its third quarter results on November 8, the company released its Opera Touch browser on the iOS platform on October 1. The company said that over 95 percent of iOS users were browsing the web through Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) default browser, Safari.

Following the announcement, shares of Opera were up 0.59 percent to close the trading session on Monday at US$6.79. By Tuesday (November 6), the company’s stock dipped 3.68 percent to close at US$6.64. The company’s shares, which made its debut on NASDAQ last quarter, have lost over 50 percent in the three month period. The stock has a “Sell” ranking on TradingView with 10 verticals against, 10 in neutral and six in favor.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Bala Yogesh, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.