TikTok owner ByteDance's 2020 revenue soars, net loss at $45 billion

BEIJING - TikTok owner ByteDance's total revenue more than doubled last year to $34.3 billion but its net loss widened to $45 billion, according to a company memo seen by Reuters.

The widening of the loss was partly attributable to accounting norms for share-based compensation of employees, a person familiar with the matter said.

Reuters has reported that ByteDance, one of the world's biggest private tech companies with an estimated value of about $300 billion in recent trades, had a revenue goal of around $30 billion for 2020.

ByteDance posted an operating loss of $2 billion and a gross profit of $19 billion, representing a 93 percent growth year over year, the company told employees in a staff meeting, upon which the memo was based.

Beijing-based ByteDance declined to comment on its financials.

It had 1.9 billion global monthly users in December 2020 for all its apps including TikTok, its Chinese version Douyin and news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.

In May, company founder Zhang Yiming unexpectedly announced that he will step down as CEO, a move that comes as Chinese regulators are increasing scrutiny of the country's biggest technology firms.