Thursday, June 26, 2014
GoPro’s I.P.O. Prices at Top of Range
Since its founding in 2004, GoPro has become the biggest name in action videos, its tiny cameras attached to hundreds of surfboards, sports bikes and skydiving helmets.
That immense popularity drew investors to its initial public offering, as the camera maker priced at the top of its expected range on Wednesday, as the market for new stock offerings has experienced a resurgence.
At $24 a share, GoPro will be valued at about $3 billion when it begins trading on the Nasdaq stock market under the ticker “GPRO.”
Though the most prominent by far, GoPro is only one of nearly 20 companies looking to make their market debuts this week, a pace unseen since the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. New issuers and investors have flocked back to I.P.O.s after a halt in the spring, when concerns about overvalued technology and health care start-ups gyrated the stock markets.
GoPro
Now, investors are again tempted by the growth potential of new stock sales. GoPro’s offering, for example, was 18 times oversubscribed, according to a person briefed on the matter.
“Investors figure that they’re going to make money,” said Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital, a research and investment advisory firm.
An exchange-traded fund maintained by Renaissance to track new I.P.O.s is up 6.7 percent over the past month, more than double the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
But since the market hiccups of the spring, investors have begun pushing back on pricing, according to Ms. Smith, with many stock sales now pricing below the midpoint of their expected price ranges. That suggests that buyers have become more disciplined in what they are willing to pay.
Still, companies like GoPro that make money remain in favor. The camera maker is certainly profitable — and growing. Sales nearly doubled last year, to $985.7 million, while net income almost doubled, to $60.6 million.
“Investors are looking at GoPro’s price as a multiple of earnings,” Ms. Smith said. “It’s nice that there are earnings.”
Created by the entrepreneur Nicholas Woodman after he wanted a camera that could record his surfing exploits, GoPro is one of only a handful of technology companies to price an I.P.O. after the spring hiatus. But the decade-old start-up hardly resembles high-tech purveyors like Zendesk, a customer-support provider.
GoPro’s main offering is its line of Hero cameras, rugged and waterproof in a way that traditional and smartphone cameras are not. So attractive are those devices that the company claims to have been the biggest seller of camcorders in the country last year, commanding 45 percent of all dollars spent in the category.
But the start-up has aspirations to become more than a photography specialist. It has pushed into media, promoting content on YouTube, Microsoft’s XBox game consoles and other channels. And it sponsors top athletes like the surfer Kelly Slater and the snowboarder Shaun White — who naturally record their exploits on GoPro cameras.
“We believe that the growing adoption of our capture devices and the engaging content they enable, position GoPro to become an exciting new media company,” the start-up wrote in its prospectus.
That transformation could help the company avoid the fate of other camera makers like Flip Video, which shut down two years after being acquired by Cisco.
Earning money from those media arrangements will take time, however. GoPro said in its prospectus that it did not expect material revenue from the new ventures this year.
The past success of GoPro has already made Mr. Woodman a billionaire. He raised about $86.4 million through the I.P.O., and his remaining holdings are now worth more than $1.2 billion. And he will retain control of the company, owning about 47.7 percent of the voting rights.
That immense popularity drew investors to its initial public offering, as the camera maker priced at the top of its expected range on Wednesday, as the market for new stock offerings has experienced a resurgence.
At $24 a share, GoPro will be valued at about $3 billion when it begins trading on the Nasdaq stock market under the ticker “GPRO.”
Though the most prominent by far, GoPro is only one of nearly 20 companies looking to make their market debuts this week, a pace unseen since the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. New issuers and investors have flocked back to I.P.O.s after a halt in the spring, when concerns about overvalued technology and health care start-ups gyrated the stock markets.
GoPro
Now, investors are again tempted by the growth potential of new stock sales. GoPro’s offering, for example, was 18 times oversubscribed, according to a person briefed on the matter.
“Investors figure that they’re going to make money,” said Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital, a research and investment advisory firm.
An exchange-traded fund maintained by Renaissance to track new I.P.O.s is up 6.7 percent over the past month, more than double the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
But since the market hiccups of the spring, investors have begun pushing back on pricing, according to Ms. Smith, with many stock sales now pricing below the midpoint of their expected price ranges. That suggests that buyers have become more disciplined in what they are willing to pay.
Still, companies like GoPro that make money remain in favor. The camera maker is certainly profitable — and growing. Sales nearly doubled last year, to $985.7 million, while net income almost doubled, to $60.6 million.
“Investors are looking at GoPro’s price as a multiple of earnings,” Ms. Smith said. “It’s nice that there are earnings.”
Created by the entrepreneur Nicholas Woodman after he wanted a camera that could record his surfing exploits, GoPro is one of only a handful of technology companies to price an I.P.O. after the spring hiatus. But the decade-old start-up hardly resembles high-tech purveyors like Zendesk, a customer-support provider.
GoPro’s main offering is its line of Hero cameras, rugged and waterproof in a way that traditional and smartphone cameras are not. So attractive are those devices that the company claims to have been the biggest seller of camcorders in the country last year, commanding 45 percent of all dollars spent in the category.
But the start-up has aspirations to become more than a photography specialist. It has pushed into media, promoting content on YouTube, Microsoft’s XBox game consoles and other channels. And it sponsors top athletes like the surfer Kelly Slater and the snowboarder Shaun White — who naturally record their exploits on GoPro cameras.
“We believe that the growing adoption of our capture devices and the engaging content they enable, position GoPro to become an exciting new media company,” the start-up wrote in its prospectus.
That transformation could help the company avoid the fate of other camera makers like Flip Video, which shut down two years after being acquired by Cisco.
Earning money from those media arrangements will take time, however. GoPro said in its prospectus that it did not expect material revenue from the new ventures this year.
The past success of GoPro has already made Mr. Woodman a billionaire. He raised about $86.4 million through the I.P.O., and his remaining holdings are now worth more than $1.2 billion. And he will retain control of the company, owning about 47.7 percent of the voting rights.
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