GoPro Inc. on Wednesday priced shares at $24, positioning the company to raise more money on Wall Street with its initial public offering than any other consumer electronics company in more than two decades. ADVERTISING GoPro Inc. on Wednesday priced
GoPro Inc. on Wednesday priced shares at $24, positioning the company to raise more money on Wall Street with its initial public offering than any other consumer electronics company in more than two decades.
GoPro’s $24 per-share pricing, the upper end of the range it offered in its IPO filing, puts GoPro’s market value just shy of $3 billion. The company is slated to begin trading Thursday on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GPRO. The company, which makes small durable cameras to capture action shots in high-definition video, is offering 17.8 million shares, which would raise a total of $427.2 million. The last consumer electronics company to surpass that was Duracell, which went public in 1991 and raised $433 million, according to research firm Dealogic.
GoPro’s financial health is robust for any tech company making its market debut. It’s profitable, but its profits fell 52 percent from $23 million in the first quarter of 2013 to $11 million in the first quarter this year. Rapid Ratings, which rates the financial health of public and private companies, gave GoPro an 86 on a score of zero to 100 — a higher rating than Alibaba, another highly anticipated IPO this year, and camcorder competitors Sony, Canon and Nikon.
Rapid Ratings looks at revenue, debt service, profitability, costs and how efficiently the company is run. By comparison, Twitter earned a 19 when it went public last year.
“GoPro is providing an opportunity to invest in a company that capitalizes on a lot of interesting trends — extreme sports, social media, wearable technology — in the shell of a manufacturing company that is already profitable,” said Rapid Ratings CEO James Gellert.
Created in 2004 by longtime surfer Nicholas Woodman, the GoPro is a rudimentary camera — lightweight, waterproof and durable enough to survive crashes on a ski slope or mountain bike trail — that can be strapped to surfboards, skis, helmets, bikes and other equipment.
It has become a prized possession among outdoor athletes who share videos of their adventures with friends or post them for the world to see on YouTube, where about 6,000 GoPro videos are posted each day.
Since launching its first HD camera in 2009, the San Mateo, Calif., company has sold 8.5 million cameras and took the top spot among U.S. camcorder makers with 45 percent of the U.S. market in 2013, according to research firm the NPD Group.
——
©2014 San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
Visit the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) at www.mercurynews.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services
—————
Topics: t000181653,t000156231,t000002537,t000002731
