ByteDance, the Chinese unicorn that owns the popular social media platform TikTok, has no plans to go public, the company’s chief financial officer said this week.
As the South China Morning Post reported Friday (Sept. 2), CFO Julia Gao made this announcement during an internal staff meeting Wednesday (Aug. 31) that also included several company executives.
The report — citing unnamed sources and other Chinese media — notes that ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo said during the meeting that many of the company’s businesses hadn’t met expectations and that ByteDance would reduce input into noncore operations.
ByteDance was not immediately available for comment Friday.
Read more: ByteDance’s Valuation Drops 25% From Last Year to Under $300B
PYMNTS reported in July that ByteDance’s valuations had fallen 25% in the past year, with investors selling their shares now that its initial public offering (IPO) had been set aside, a move the company made last year.
The company has had to step back from some of its expansion projects as the Chinese government steps up scrutiny. For instance, ByteDance in June shuttered a game development studio, laying off 100 staffers and walking away from aspirations to compete with Tencent.
Read more: TikTok Drops Livestream Shopping Plans in US, Europe
Also in July, ByteDance dropped its plans to expand its livestream shopping venture TikTok Shop in the U.S. and Europe after it failed to capture an audience among consumers in the U.K.
TikTok Shop launched in Britain in 2021, its first market outside Asia, where the service is offered in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia on the Chinese sister app Douyin.
With the advent of livestream shopping, Douyin has more than tripled sales, selling more than 10 billion products. But in the U.K., the livestream shopping project never achieved momentum, and influencers — the stars and drivers of the program — began dropping out in June.
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