GoPro and Its Founder to Sell More Shares 5 Months After IPO
Five months after staging one of the most promoted initial public offerings of the year, GoPro is heading back to the stock market to sell more shares. And so is the video camera maker's founder, Nicholas Woodman.
In a securities filing on Monday, GoPro disclosed that it and some of its early investors planned to sell stock in a so-called follow-on offering. The company itself will raise about $100 million, while other investors will sell an as-yet undisclosed amount of shares.
Behind the move, according to the company, are two motives. One is a desire to raise additional money for hirings and acquisitions. The other is to let the company take more control over how more of its shares enter the market, ahead of the end of a lockup period tied to the I.P.O.
That lockup, which expires on Dec. 22, will free early investors to sell whatever shares they didn't cash out during the first stock sale. Expirations of those periods sometimes can be bumpy, however, as a flood of new stock hits the market.
GoPro is hoping to circumvent that by working with those shareholders to sell stock in a managed offering, creating what it described as a 'more orderly and gradual' process. Investors who sell in the follow-on will be subject to another 90-day lockup period.
One of the participants in the offering will be Mr. Woodman, the surfer-turned-entrepreneur who built the company into a darling of the extreme-sports set. The I.P.O. turned him into a billionaire, with a current net worth of nearly $3.5 billion.
Yet he generated some controversy last month when he gave 5.8 million shares to a new foundation that wasn't subject to the lockup period. Critics of the move called it a way to get around the lockup period, and shares in the company fell after the announcement.
In a letter to employees on Monday, however, Mr. Woodman said that he was sticking with the camera maker for some time. 'I plan to sell a portion of my holdings in GoPro, but no one should misunderstand my commitment to the company or our vision,' he wrote. 'As I told investors on our earnings call last week, I plan to be a significant shareholder in GoPro for a long time. I'm a huge believer in our vision and our ability to realize it.'
Shares in GoPro were down 3.5 percent in midday trading on Monday, at $76.25. The shares are still up significantly from the I.P.O. price of $24 a share.
The follow-on offering will be led by JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.
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