After much speculation about its financial health in 2017, SoundCloud has bought itself more time by finalising a $70m round of debt-funding.
The company confirmed the news after Business Insider spotted a filing with Companies House in the UK, showing that the loan had been agreed on 10 March.
“We are pleased to have secured a flexible $70 million credit line from Ares Capital, Kreos Capital and Davidson Technology that is ideally structured for a company with our strong credit rating and in our stage of growth,” said SoundCloud’s spokesperson.
“This new funding will enable SoundCloud to strategically grow our technology and personnel resources to fuel our expected 2.5 times year-over-year growth in 2017, while building a financially sustainable platform on which our connected community of creators, listeners and curators can thrive for years to come.”
This is SoundCloud’s second debt-funding round: its first came in January 2016 with a $35m round from Tennenbaum Capital Partners.
SoundCloud also raised a $70m round of traditional funding from Twitter in June that year. It has now raised $320m of traditional and debt funding since its launch, although the payment terms for the latest $70m injection have not been revealed in the Companies House filing.
How far will that $70m go? SoundCloud’s most recent set of financial results, for 2015, revealed losses of €51.2m ($55.3m) for that year.
The company has given no indication of its revenue and losses for 2016 other than to say it enjoyed “solid growth” that year, while the claim that it expects “2.5 times year-over-year growth” relates to 2017 rather than 2016.
The debt-funding round buys a little more time, then, but if SoundCloud truly is to “thrive for years to come” that still seems more likely to involve an acquisition rather than an IPO.
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