Huya Stocks Rise Over 7% Against The Market, Could Merge With Douyu By the End of This Year

On June 11, the three major U.S. stock indexes closed with the Dow Jones down 6.90%, Nasdaq down 5.27 % and the S&P 500 down 5.89%. While most popular Chinese stocks fell, live-streaming platform Huya gained 7.54%, its biggest one-day gain since March 26, with the stock price climbing to $17.25, giving it a total market value of $3.786 billion.

Sources close to the company confirmed that a merger between Doyu and Huya, China’s two biggest live-streaming platforms is underway, with Tencent facilitating the merger, The Beijing News reported.

Douyu replied to Chinese media 36Kr that it was unaware of the situation and would not comment. Huya responded by saying it had no comment.

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Tencent has long been involved with the two platforms holding equity in each. As of April 3, 2020, Tencent had a 36.9% stake in Huya and 50.9% voting rights, according to the company’s official filings. By March 31, 2020, Tencent holds 38% of Douyu‘s shares and 38% of its voting rights, making it the largest shareholder of Douyu.

In terms of business, LatePost reported last September that Tencent IEG set up a game live-streaming business department in March 2019. One of its main tasks was to balance the competition for live-streamers among the three platforms to control overall consumption. There have also been discussions within Tencent about the possibility of merging Huya and Douyu, the article said.

In terms of performance, in the first quarter of 2020, Huya realized revenue of 2.412 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 47.8%. Its net profit was 171.2 million yuan, up 169.8% year-on-year. Under non-GAAP, the net profit attributable to Huya was 263 million yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 100.7%, it has been profitable for ten consecutive quarters.