Variety is reporting that Warner Music Group Corp. announced today that it has launched the initial public offering of 70,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock, pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The initial public offering price is expected to be between $23.00 and $26.00 per share, which values the company at $13.3 billion. The offering consists entirely of secondary shares to be sold by Access and certain related selling stockholders.

The company, which is owned entirely by Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, first announced its intention to launch an IPO in February, but shortly afterward, on March 2, delayed it when the coronavirus pandemic took effect in the U.S. and Europe. Access purchased Warner in 2011 for $3.3 billion.

The underwriters will have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 10,500,000 shares of Class A common stock from the selling stockholders.  The Company will not receive any proceeds from the offering.  The Company has been approved to list its shares of Class A common stock on The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC under the ticker symbol “WMG.”

The resumption of the IPO is in many ways not surprising. While Universal Music Group was recently valued at a whopping $33 billion — as part of its agreement to sell 10% of itself to a consortium led by Chinese tech giant Tencent — like most businesses the music industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic: Consequently, a Goldman Sachs report released earlier this month projects a 25% drop in global music revenue in 2020.

However, recorded-music and music publishing thus far have been less affected economically by the pandemic than live-entertainment business, which has been flattened by the bans on large gatherings, leading Goldman to project a 75% revenue plunge for the live industry this year, to $7 billion. But since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. and Europe toward the end of the last financial quarter, its impact was only beginning to be felt by most companies, thus, an impetus behind Warner’s move is likely that the company is looking to launch the IPO before the market feels the full effect of the pandemic.

Read the full story at Variety.com.