Pandora may be feeling the pressure from rival music services such as Spotify and upstart Apple Music.
James Martin/CNET
Is Inteet radio giant Pandora looking to switch channels?
The music streaming service has held talks about selling the company and is working with Morgan Stanley to line up potential buyers, sources tell The New York Times. Talks are said to be in a preliminary stage and may not lead to a sale, the Times' unidentified sources said.
Pandora declined to comment on the report.
The talks would suggest that Pandora, the Inteet's largest streaming music service, is feeling the pinch as listeners move toward rivals such as Spotify and Apple Music, which allows on-demand listening to specific tracks. The company said Thursday it counted 81.1 million active users at the end of its fourth quarter, which ended December 31, down from 81.5 million a year ago.
Meanwhile, competitors are encroaching on the 16-year-old company's turf. Spotify reported in June it had 75 million active users worldwide, up from 50 million the previous November. Apple reportedly reached the 10 million paying-customer mark in January, just six months after the streaming service launched, a milestone that rival music-streaming service Spotify took nearly six years to reach.
Streaming music has exploded in popularity in recent years, with the number of on-demand streams in the US nearly doubling last year, according to researcher Nielsen's year-end music report. Fans logged nearly 145 billion audio streams in 2015, up 79 percent from the previous year, the researcher found.
But in the face of increased competition, Pandora has struggled to tu that fertile market into profits. The Oakland, Califoia-based company on Thursday posted a diluted eaings per share of 4 cents on revenue of $336 million. Revenue was up from the $268 million in sales the company posted in the fourth quarter of 2014, but its eaings per share declined dramatically from the 18 cents in the year-ago quarter. Thomson Reuters' consensus estimate pegged eaings per share at 7 cents.
The company's recent performance has done little to impress investors, who have pushed down the value of Pandora's shares nearly 60 percent in a little more than three months. Pandora's stock closed Thursday at $9.09, up 69 cents, or 8.2 percent, after the Times' report was published. But the shine of sale talk wasn't enough to keep investors' interest, and the stock declined 5.8 percent in after-hours trading.
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