GoPro records a ‘bad’ fourth quarter

GoPro recently reviewed its financial figures for the last quarter of 2017 and what seems to be rather unpleasant is its performance in the last year. Though it wasn’t as bad as 2016, but even the holiday season couldn’t boost sales while wrapping up the fourth quarter last year.

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The company has been undergoing a rough patch as it recently cancelled the Karma drone and also lay off many of its employees. And if the revenue is to be considered, this quarter recorded the worst result since the company went public in 2017.

Nick Woodman, the CEO of GoPro had commented last month on the path the company was progressing on by saying, “The data is clear that our customers demand a couple of things from us every fourth quarter if we hope to sell them a new GoPro. They obviously demand that we introduce a compelling new model. And they demanded that we offer them last year’s model at a reduced price. And we failed on that second part. Hero 6 we nailed. Fusion we nailed. But selling Hero 5 Black and Hero 5 Session at the same price that we offered them a year earlier caused a problem.”

The company lost less money in 2017 than it did in the fourth quarter of 2016 ($55 million versus $115 million). And the year as a whole was a marked improvement on the abysmal 2016 it suffered. GoPro almost halved its losses from year to year and increased its cash balance to a total of $247 million. It is projecting operating expenses in 2018 of less than $400 million, which would be almost half of what the company spent in 2016.

Woodman had also said that GoPro will release ‘multiple new cameras designed to resonate with a broad range of consumers’ and will be available in the first half of 2018. It will also arm itself with enhanced analytics and get to connect to the customers for a better feedback and experience.