Mounting pressure from the White House is undercutting the value of TikTok, the viral video service owned by China’s ByteDance, in its asset sale talks with Microsoft as President Donald Trump orders an imminent ban on the company, reported Caixin.
A Caixin source close to the matter said ByteDance is in an increasingly unfavorable negotiating position in discussions to sell part of TikTok’s operations to Microsoft and ward off a US ban.
The price tag of TikTok’s businesses in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand has been beaten down to $10 billion, the source said, half or less than previous market estimates.
A ByteDance investor told Caixin earlier that investors valued TikTok’s entire global business at about $100 billion. Analysts and bankers have estimated the US operations, TikTok’s second-largest overseas market after India, at $20 billion to $50 billion, according to Bloomberg data.
