Lights, Camera, IPO: GoPro Goes Public

What's This?

Nick Woodman (C), founder and CEO of GoPro and the GoPro team celebrate during the company's initial public offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on June 26, 2014 in New York City.

Image: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

By Seth Fiegerman2014-06-26 15:03:18 UTC

GoPro stock surged above $30 a share in its first minutes of trading on the Nasdaq, a gain of more than 30% from its IPO price.

The wearable camera maker announced late Wednesday that it had priced its initial public offering at $24 a share — the high end of its proposed price range — raising $427 million and valuing the company at just under $3 billion.

See also: 15 Terrifying GoPro Videos to Make Your Heart Skip

The stock, which trades under the ticker GPRO, opened at $28.65 a share on Thursday.

Even before the stock began to trade, at least one analyst issued a Buy rating for it, citing the "value" of the GoPro brand and its potential to become more of a media business.

GoPro was founded a decade ago and generates the vast majority of its revenue from hardware and accessories. The company reported $986 million in revenue for 2013, nearly doubling its revenue from the year before. Unlike some other tech companies that have gone public in recent months, GoPro is also profitable.

In its filings to go public, GoPro spelled out plans to continue expanding beyond hardware and becoming more of a media business.

"We believe GoPro is well-positioned to become the first media company whose content is captured exclusively using its own hardware," the company wrote in its S-1 filing. "We will continue to expand our distribution of GoPro programming and the reach of the GoPro Network to new platforms such as Xbox Live."

Leading up to the public offering, GoPro laid out a series of risk factors, including the possibility that its media ambitions might not pan out, that most of its revenue depends on the ultra-competitive hardware market and a notable dependence on its CEO and founder Nicholas Woodman.

Perhaps to ease the last of those concerns, GoPro hired Tony Bates to serve as its president and board member. Bates was formerly CEO of Skype and a top exec at Microsoft who had been in the running to replace Steve Ballmer as its chief executive.

Topics: Business, gopro, stocks