UPDATED 22:55 EDT / SEPTEMBER 25 2019

EMERGING TECH

Peloton sets IPO price at $29 but shares fall in Nasdaq debut

Updated:

Connected fitness technology firm Peloton Interactive Inc. Wednesday set its initial public offering price at $29 per share ahead of its debut on the Nasdaq exchange, but investors weren’t all that impressed when shares debuted Thursday morning.

Priced at the high end of its original price estimate of $26 to $29 per share, the IPO saw Peloton raise $1.16 billion on a valuation of $8.1 billion. But shares opened almost 7% lower on their debut, indicating that investors remain wary of paying up for money-losing companies. They closed the day down 11%, to $25.76 a share.

Coming into its IPO, Peloton had raised $994.7 million from investors that included NBCUniversal, Wellington Management, Winslow Capital, Tiger Global Management, Kleiner Perkins, Balyasny Asset Management, TCV, Felix Capital, GGV Capital and True Ventures.

Founded in 2012, Peloton offers high-priced connected in-home exercise gym bikes and treadmills that come with interactive screens. Those screens are tied to subscription-based online workout classes that the company charges $39 per month to access.

Peloton’s fitness bikes start at $2,245 and its treadmills start at $4,295, which David Trainer at Forbes noted makes its IPO the only thing more overpriced than its products.

Still, the products have a following, as the company grossed $915 million in revenue for its fiscal year ended June 30, with 511,000 paying subscribers. But like many tech startups going public, it also has never made a profit. For the 12 months to June 30, Peloton reported at $245.7 million loss, up from $47.9 million the year before.

Although the majority of tech startups going public this year have found willing audiences, that hasn’t always been the case with companies showing big losses. Uber Technologies Inc.‘s and Lyft Inc.’s IPOs are the better-known flops in 2019, but SmileDirectClub, yet-another money-losing startup, debuted on the Nasdaq Sept. 12 and immediately dropped 27.5% on its first day of trading, the biggest one-day drop for an IPO in 29 years.

Peloton has roughly twice the sales of SmileDirectClub, but its losses are three times larger. Investors have been generous while investing in such startups, but they were generally all strictly online startups without tangible products. Like SmileDirectClub, Peloton sells physical goods and arguably overpriced ones at that.

Peloton’s debut Thursday under the ticker symbol “PTON” was seen as a test of overall market sentiment when it comes to tech startups that sell physical goods as well as those losing money. On both counts, Peloton didn’t set a great precedent for others to come.

Photo: Peloton

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