GoPro (GPRO) Rings in Holiday Season With Record Sales
Undeterred by the coronavirus-induced adversities, GoPro, Inc. GPRO rang in the holiday season with all-time high sales during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday period. Backed by a direct-to-consumer and subscription-centric strategy, the company achieved the coveted subscription and sales milestone during this period and remained well on track to continue this growth momentum in 2021.
GoPro revealed that its subscriber count crossed the 670,000 mark during the November-end festivities with strong online sales. It expects to surpass the target of 700,000 subscribers by the end of 2020. Much of this renewed optimism was driven by the solid traction in GoPro Plus subscription service that offers unlimited original quality cloud storage of GoPro footage, no-questions-asked camera replacement and up to 50% off on GoPro's mounts and accessories along with a new line of backpacks and travel bags. The subscriptions are priced at a monthly fee of $4.99 or $49.99 on a yearly basis.
Notably, GoPro sold its 40 millionth camera during this period, marking a significant achievement since the debut of its first HD model in 2009. It shipped 923,000 camera units alone during third-quarter 2020, up 92.7% year over year, backed by a higher demand for premium products. The company launched HERO9 Black model in the third quarter, which is also making waves across the globe. With solid traction for high-end cameras and an upward sell-through trend across all geographies, GoPro expects to end the year with low inventory levels.
The company is developing various types of software solutions and hardware to curtail the complexity of managing, editing and sharing contents on different media platforms. GoPro’s app Quik enables users to instantly edit their GoPro footage on their phones and create short videos for networking sites like Facebook, Inc. FB and Instagram. The company also launched QuikStories, a new GoPro App feature that automatically copies footage to create a ready-to-share video. Additionally, the company is marketing the combined GoPro and smartphone experience to its existing community, which is focused on out-of-home, paid search and rich media, OTT (over-the-top) videos designed to funnel conversions. We believe that these efforts will pay off, and go a long way toward opening GoPro to a wider audience and expanding the company’s user base.
GoPro intends to transform itself from the ‘camera maker’ to ‘content maker’ and has taken proactive steps to solidify its position in the burgeoning virtual reality (VR) market. Its products seem well positioned to dominate the trending VR market. Moreover, GoPro has been focusing on offering its immersive imagery video experience to millions of people across the world through its GoPro Channel. It is collaborating with technology and content partners like Adobe Inc. ADBE as well as content platforms like Facebook, in order to optimize the program. The program will allow content creators to generate revenue from their content and GoPro can license this content to global advertising brands to generate revenues. GoPro has been diligently working toward spreading its popularity across the spectrum, through concentrated and successful marketing efforts. At the same, it is making investments in merchandising and retail advertising to drive a bigger brand presence while continuing to innovate. It intends to expand footprint in emerging markets like India and remains focused on scaling its CRM (customer relationship management) efforts to augment customer base.
Over the past year, the stock has gained a stellar 108.2% compared with the industry’s rise of 38%.
We remain impressed with the inherent growth potential of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A better-ranked stock in the industry is Panasonic Corp. PCRFY, carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Panasonic has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 2.8%. It delivered a positive earnings surprise of 10.1%, on average, in the trailing four quarters.
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