Sonos cuts price of IPO, valuing smart speaker company at about $1.5 billion
- Sonos priced its IPO below the company's previously announced range.
- The company is scheduled to debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
Sonos, the maker of smart speakers for the home, cut the price of its initial public offering on Wednesday.
The company priced its IPO at $15 a share, below the expected range of $17 to $19. At the offer price, Sonos is valued at just under $1.5 billion. In April, MarketWatch said Sonos could be worth as much as $3 billion as a public company.
Sonos disclosed its plan to go public on July 6, and two weeks later said it planned to raise up to $263.9 million, not including an over-allotment to underwriters. In selling 13.9 million shares at $15 a piece, the company is raising $208.5 million.
Sonos markets its high-end, web-connected speakers to audiophiles and music fans as the speaker industry moves toward smart assistants made by Amazon and Google. Sonos introduced its first voice-enabled speaker, the Sonos One, late last year. It counts traditional speaker makers Bose and Samsung among its competitors.
The company reported a net loss of $14.2 million on revenue of $992.5 million for its most recent fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. That's an improvement from fiscal 2016, when the company posted a loss of $38.2 million on sales of $901.3 million.
The company's IPO follows a number of high-profile offerings in the first half of 2018. Music streaming service Spotify, cloud storage provider Dropbox and software company DocuSign all debuted earlier this year.
Sonos is scheduled to start trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday under the ticker symbol "SONO." The lead underwriters are Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.