FITBIT makes wearable devices that help people track their daily activities, such as exercise and sleep. Of late, however, Fitbit has been the one submitting itself to close monitoring. Prospective investors have been poring over the company’s financial information before the company’s launch on the New York Stock Exchange on June 18th. Its expected valuation of more than $4 billion would make it one of this year’s largest initial public offerings.
Fitbit’s high valuation reflects the excitement over the potential of wearables (see page 84). With its simple plastic bracelets the eight-year-old firm helped popularise the craze for quantifying exercise and other habits, by making it easy for users to track and upload their information to an online dashboard. In the first quarter of 2015 Fitbit sold around a third of the 11.4m wearable devices shipped worldwide (excluding Apple Watches, for which sales figures are not reported).
Unlike many fast-growing technology firms, Fitbit is profitable. In 2014 it had revenues of around $745m and net income of $132m. There has been so much...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1CfhI3x
No comments:
Post a Comment