China's Mobvista acquires marketing business

Mobvista offers a suite of cloud-based platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools related to mobile marketing and data analytics.

The company was founded in 2013, listed on China’s National Equities Exchange & Quotations (NEEQ) board in 2015, and went public in Hong Kong in a HK$1.3 billion ($165 million) IPO in 2018. Prior to listing, it received private funding from the likes of Netease Capital, Midas Capital, and Haitong Kaiyuan Investment.

Founded in 2013, Reyun provides data monitoring, campaign management, and analytics services for more than 700 million active devices a month. The company service clients across mobile games, social networking, finance, e-commerce, education, and live broadcasting among other categories. Last year, it became a China partner for Facebook.

Reyun raised VC funding as recently as October 2020 from Hidea Venture Capital, Puchao Capital, New Access Capital, Orient Securities Capital, and Orient Securities Venture Capital. The size of the round was not disclosed. Previous investors include Teda Venture Capital and Fosun Group, which provided an RMB100 million Series B extension in 2019.

The plan is to integrate Reyun’s SaaS products into the Mobvista ecosystem to strengthen the combined company’s local market presence and facilitate more Southeast Asian brand entries into China. This will involve developing multiple new product lines to increase revenue and the number of overseas users for partnering mobile apps.

Reyun will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobvista, with Tony Bai staying on as CEO of Reyun and taking a senior vice president role at Mobvista. “The acquisition enables us to build more comprehensive, data-fueled solutions that meet customers’ needs across their entire value chain and product lifecycle,” Bai said in a statement.

Shares in Mobvista were relatively steady following confirmation of the deal, trading at HK$9.18 as of mid-afternoon April 29. This gave company a market capitalization of HK$14.7 billion. The stock spiked 130% in mid-January to an all-time high of HK$9.64, following the issue of $30 million in convertible bonds to private equity firm PAG.

Mobvista’s revenue improved 3% during 2020 to $516.1 million on the back of a strong performance by the company’s Mintegral advertising platform, which focuses on bridging Asian and Western markets. However, the company posted a loss of $5.2 million for the year, compared to a $22.1 million profit in 2019, citing geopolitical tensions.

Mobvista said that it had encountered a reputational attack from Western competitors during 2020 resulting in the suspension of some of Mintegral’s Europe and US partnerships. It also noted that a new privacy policy from Apple had negatively impacted the mobile advertising industry.

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