Shares in Snap Inc. bounced somewhat in trading Wednesday after a quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission filing disclosed that Chinese investment giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. had acquired a 12 percent stake in the company.

Tencent, which is best known as the owner of Chinese messaging service WeChat, acquired 145,778,246 shares of Snap Class A common stock but was not required to reveal the investment earlier because the stock did not come with voting rights.

Why Tencent has taken a 12 percent stake in Snap was not officially disclosed. Some, such as Recode, suggested that it may see Snap as being undervalued. But others have a different theory. John Colley, a professor from the Warwick Business School, told SiliconANGLE that “it is increasingly looking as though Facebook will win this war and Snap needs to start finding an exit route.” Tencent, which owns the dominant WeChat messaging service in China, could provide that route, he added.

“Perhaps Tencent is looking for a vehicle to take on Facebook,” Colley said. “Without Tencent, there is little to prevent Snap’s decline. Perhaps Evan Spiegel’s luck is changing, although quite where he fits with the future of Snap is another question.”

Others aren’t so sure Tencent will go that far. Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said in a note to clients today that it’s “highly unlikely that Tencent would ever be in a position to buy the whole company – even if such a transaction were ever to make sense, given the current dependence that Snap has on its current CEO and controlling shareholder [and] given sensitivities around foreign influence in social media in the U.S. and because of China’s restrictions on outbound foreign investment.”

In any case, more details also came to light about Snap’s plan to redesign its core Snapchat messaging app, something first raised when it reported its quarterly earnings Tuesday. According to Business Insider, the redesign is scheduled to start rolling out Dec. 4 and will see now see all friend-based communications, including Stories, to the left of the camera, while the area to the right of the camera will now feature crowdsourced videos and premium content produced by Snap’s publishing partners.

The market initially liked the news that Tencent had brought into the struggling company, with Snap shares rebounding up to as high as $15.10 in trading before settling back to a more modest $12.91, still down almost 15 percent on the day.

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