TikTok Europe turnover fattens from advertising spend as losses grow fourfold
TikTok’s European turnover surged by 545 per cent to $171m last year as the social media platform raked in cash from advertisers’ increased spending, a new company filing revealed today.
According to the Companies House filing, the Chinese-owned firm has invested in scaling its European side of the business through new hires and increased sales and marketing efforts, as it pits itself against rival platforms Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Snap.
But these efforts drove the firm’s operating losses up 442 per cent from $119m in 2019 to $644m in 2020.
Marketing and sales accounted for $345m of spending in 2020, tripling from $110m in 2019, the filing revealed.
TikTok increased its headcount across Europe and the UK to by over 1000 employees last year, from 208 people in 2019 to 1294 in 2020.
This compares with its US headcount which has grown from under 500 at the start of the year to almost 1,400 today – and which it said in July it aims to increase to 10,000 over the next three years.
A a spokesperson for the company said the results reflect “an exciting period of growth for the business.”
“We saw revenue increase significantly as our community grew, and we’ve continued to invest aggressively in building a solid foundation for the long-term success of the platform,” they added.
It comes a week after the platform announced it had suprassed 1 billion active monthly users, after the platform’s popularity exploded during the pandemic.
The video sharing platform became the most-downloaded app in the world in the first quarter of 2020 as the pandemic took hold, amassing some 315m downloads in those months alone, according to data from SensorTower.
These numbers are quite a feat considering the app has faced intense scrutiny from governments around the world, including the US, where former president Donald Trump attempted to block new users from downloading the apps and ban other technical transactions, effectively banning them in the US.
Current president Joe Biden has since reversed these efforts, as the US workforce grows.
The group’s total shareholder deficit increased almost in line with its turnover last year, to $767m in 2020 from $123m in 2019.
China’s ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has tabled plans to list in Hong Kong in the current quarter or in early 2022, sources revealed in August. Its listing plans are dependent on the company addressing Chinese regulators’ concerns – and the company denied the reports it was eyeing an IPO at the time.