The Chinese tech giant plans to offer employees $200.41 per share in the repurchase program, Reuters reported Wednesday (Aug. 27), citing sources familiar with the matter. That figure is up from the $189.90 each it offered them about six months ago, which valued ByteDance at around $315 billion, the report added.
PYMNTS has contacted ByteDance for comment but has not yet gotten a response.
Reuters notes that this is happening as ByteDance cements its position as the world’s largest social media company in terms of revenue. The news outlet’s sources said the company, which owns short-form video app TikTok, saw its second-quarter revenue climb 25% year over year.
During the first quarter, ByteDance’s revenue topped $43 billion, making it the world’s number one social media company by sales, beating the $42.3 billion earned by Meta in that period.
Still, ByteDance’s valuation remains less than a fifth of Meta’s roughly $1.9 trillion market cap. According to Reuters, analysts chalk that gap up to political and regulatory risks in the U.S., where TikTok has 170 million users.
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ByteDance is facing pressure to sell TikTok’s U.S. business, with Congress passing a law last year requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets by Jan. 19, 2025 or face a nationwide ban of the app, which has 170 million U.S. users.
President Donald Trump has granted TikTok multiple extensions, the most recent one giving the company until Sept. 17 to find a new buyer.
These reprieves have led to criticism from some lawmakers, who contend the Trump administration is “flouting the law” and ignoring the national security concerns related to ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government that caused the ban in the first place.
While ByteDance is profitable as a company, TikTok’s U.S. business has been loss-making thus far, said two of the Reuters sources. If and when the sale becomes final, TikTok U.S. will be a joint venture run by a group of American investors, with ByteDance holding a minority stake.
Meanwhile, last week brought a report that TikTok plans to let go of hundreds of staffers in its trust and safety department as it reorganizes its content moderation efforts and automates more of that work with artificial intelligence (AI).
According to the Financial Times, the company said the layoffs “are intended to concentrate operation expertise in specific locations” and that “technological advances, such as the enhancement of large language models, are reshaping our approach.”
