Sonos Inc. is all set to go public on Wall Street with its upcoming initial public offering (IPO).
The wireless smart speaker market is booming, but Sonos will face fierce competition from big players like Amazon, Google, and Apple. These companies are all expanding their smart home device offerings, and fighting for billions in future revenues.
In that jungle, Sonos plans to raise $264.1 million in funding from its first IPO, with shares priced between $17 and $19 per share to start. The company will trade under the ticker symbol SONO.
Sonos says its customers listen to about 70 hours of audio content per month. The smart speaker manufacturer continues to market its products to audiophiles who are willing to pay a bit more for quality sound.
The company was founded in 2002 and has been led by Patrick Spence since January 2017, with products in around 7 million households across the globe.
Sonos has been competitive in the smart speaker category, but the rise in popularity of Amazon’s Echo has undoubtedly caused an impact for the company’s bottom line.
Accordingly, Sonos will begin focusing on its range of voice-activated smart speakers to better compete with Amazon Echo and Google Home offerings, but these products make use of Amazon’s Alexa system. The question is whether Sonos can survive with that reliance, or whether it makes perfect sense in a complex and growing smart speaker ecosystem.
The Echo reliance raises questions about the viability of smart speakers, whose backbone could be disabled at the whims of Amazon, rather than the producing company. For now, Sonos says it is working on deals with other companies to integrate voice-control technology.
Sonos’ speakers also support Apple’s AirPlay 2 wireless music streaming and support for Google Assistant.
Earlier, Sonos posted a net loss of $14.2 million on $992.5 million in revenue for 2017, which is down from a loss of $38.2 million on $901.3 million in revenue for 2016. The total market valuation for the company is $1.87 billion, based on the $19 share price offering.