The stock market gave Fitbit a valuation of nearly $6.3 billion as the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, making the IPO one of the most successful ones in recent years. It's a lot for a company that had net income of $131.8 million on sales of $745.4 million last year, recovering from a loss in 2013. As reported, its revenues jumped by 175 percent in 2014 and by 209 percent in the first quarter of 2015, reaching $336.7 million in a red-hot connected fitness market.
The leading American supplier of fitness trackers had initially planned to offer 29.85 million shares at a price of $14 and $16 per share. Updating its filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, Fitbit and its advisers upgraded the IPO earlier this week, setting a price of $17 to $19 a share and raising the size of the offering to 34.5 million shares.
At the top of this range, Fitbit would have been worth about $3.9 billion, giving it a price/sales multiple higher than Apple, Garmin or Samsung, but lower than GoPro. In the end, its shares opened at just over $30 and closed at just under $30, after intense trading: In the first 90 minutes of going public, the total number of shares traded reached 38 million, more than those that had been offered.
The company grossed proceeds of $448 million through the IPO. The selling shareholders made $346 million. Fitbit has raised over $80 million in venture capital funding since it started up in 2007. The IPO was underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
