Photo Credit: Tencent Music
Despite posting seemingly solid Q4 2025 financials, Tencent Music (NYSE: TME) suffered a nearly 25% stock-price falloff today, when shares plummeted to a 52-week low.
Technically, TME finished the day at $11.37 – or just above that 52-week low. But the closing price reflects an almost 25% decline from opening, an over 36% decrease from 2026’s beginning, and a roughly 13% slip from mid-March 2025.
Put mildly, it was a tough Tuesday for Tencent Music. And as the valuation woes coincided with the aforementioned Q4 earnings, it’d be easy to assume that lackluster financials set the episode in motion.
But at least when it comes to the “lackluster” descriptor, this isn’t quite true: The QQ, Kugou, Kuwo, and WeSing operator pointed to 15.9% year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth for Q4 2025, generating CNY 8.64 billion (currently $1.25 billion).
And in keeping with long-running trends – stemming, in short, from a focus on core streaming operations and monetization – online music services revenue hit $1.03 billion/CNY 7.10 billion (up 21.7% YoY), according to the Shenzhen-based company. Therein, Q4 subscription revenue is said to have climbed 13.2% YoY to $662.13 million/CNY 4.56 billion.
Behind the latter improvement, Tencent Music identified 127.4 million paying users (up 5.3% YoY) – though MAUs fell 5% YoY to 528 million.
Some of the earnings report’s other positives: Now leveraging all sorts of superfan offerings, Tencent Music indicated that it’d topped 20 million SVIP subscribers before 2025’s conclusion.
Similarly, QQ rolled out Weverse DM, offering access to “around 170 artists from HYBE.” Furthermore, Tencent Music, having reupped with Warner Music (and Believe), emphasized its KIT album collaboration on Ed Sheeran’s Play as well as its Lay Zhang gift box.
Throw in net profit of $319.45 million/CNY 2.20 billion (up 12.6% YoY) and you’re left with a respectable overall showing for the company, which is making waves in concert promotion to boot. What, then, prompted the share-price turbulence?
First, it’s worth reiterating institutional investors’ material Tencent Music stock holdings and shares’ history of valuation contractions. At the intersection of both points, amid sky-high analyst forecasts, TME in early 2021 surpassed $30 – before sinking all the way to $3.50 or so during the following year.
Closer to the present, Tencent Music stakeholders might be responding to the company’s dialed-back earnings disclosures. Moving forward, the streaming giant confirmed in its Q4 2025 breakdown, quarterly reports won’t include subscriber totals.
“[W]e are increasingly focused on revenue and profit as our primary performance indicators,” Tencent Music explained. “Given this evolution, starting from next quarter, we will discontinue the disclosure of certain quarterly operating metrics, including online music MAU, paying users and ARPPU. We will instead report the number of total paying users across our music services annually, as of year-end.”
“In 2026,” Tencent Music executive chairman Cussion Pang elaborated during the earnings call, “our subscription revenue will experience some short-term pressure due to the intense competition. But we believe that our three-tier membership and refined non-subscription services will allow us to grow healthily, holistically, and also sustainably.”
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