TikTok is looking at a possible ban in the US if The Supreme Court decides. Upholding national security law that includes service providers such as apple And Google Hosting the app after the Sunday deadline will incur a penalty. ByteDance has not indicated that it will sell the US unit of the app, but the Chinese government What is considered? A plan in which X’s owners would acquire Musk’s operations is among several scenarios being considered, according to Bloomberg News. Reported Monday
If ByteDance decides to sell, it could cost potential buyers between $40 billion and $50 billion. That’s the assessment held by Angelo Zeno, senior vice president of CFRA Research. Estimated For TikTok’s US operations. Zino based his assessment on estimates of TikTok’s US user base and revenue compared to rival apps.
A market intelligence firm estimates that TikTok has about 115 million monthly mobile users in the US, slightly behind Instagram’s 131 million. Sensor tower. This puts TikTok ahead. Snapchat, Pinterest And RedditAccording to Sensor Tower, which has US monthly mobile user bases of 96 million, 74 million and 32 million respectively.
However, Zeno’s estimate is less than the $60 billion he estimated for the unit in March 2024, when the House passed the initial national security bill that President Joe Biden signed. Signed in law next month.
Zeno told CNBC in an email that the lower estimate is due to TikTok’s current geopolitical situation and because “industry multiples have come down a bit” since March. Zino’s estimate does not include TikTok’s valuable recommendation algorithms, which a U.S. buyer would not receive as part of a deal, algorithms and their alleged ties to China are central to the U.S. government’s case that TikTok is national. Security is at risk.
Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence put their estimates for TikTok’s US operations at between $30 billion and $35 billion. That’s the estimate they published in July, when they said the unit price would be “discounted due to a forced sale.”
Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence noted that finding a buyer for TikTok’s U.S. operations that can afford the transaction and deal with data privacy as well as regulatory scrutiny makes a sale challenging. It could also make it harder for a buyer to grow TikTok’s advertising business, he wrote.
A consortium of businessmen including billionaires Frank McCourt And Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures, made a bid to buy TikTok from ByteDance. O’Leary has previously said the group would be willing to pay up 20 billion dollars To acquire US assets without algorithms.
Unlike the Musk bid, O’Leary’s group’s bid would be free of regulatory scrutiny, O’Leary said Monday. The interview With Fox News.
O’Leary said he’s a “huge fan of Elon Musk,” but added that “the idea that a regulator, even under a Trump administration, would allow this is very slim.”
TikTok, X and O’Leary Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.