Sonos is working hard to prove Wall Street wrong.
The smart speaker maker’s debut on the Nasdaq in August 2018 was marred, in part, by President Trump’s trade war with China.
Shares of Sonos (SONO) did rise more than 20% on that first day of trading, but only after the company cut the price of its initial public offering to $15 a share, well below the range of $17 to $19 that the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company had predicted.
Investors were worried that the company would get caught in the trade war. Thirteen months later, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence tells Yahoo Finance, “I don’t think it’ll be a factor impacting our long-term trajectory as a company.”
Like most American consumer electronics, the speakers sold by Sonos are made in China, but Spence says his company has been preparing for the tariffs by diversifying its supply chain outside of the country.
Sonos has also been able to avoid raising prices on its products.
“We’ve accelerated our plans a little bit so that we can properly mitigate these issues,” he says. “We don’t expect it to have an impact on our fiscal 2019.”
The 15% tariffs on $111 billion of Chinese imports comes at a time when Sonos unveiled its first-ever portable speaker with Bluetooth. The Sonos Move will hit store shelves Sept. 24 and retail for $399.
Stock resurgence
Sonos’ stock is down 19% since last year’s IPO, but it has enjoyed a recent resurgence.
In its third-quarter earnings report, the company posted a narrower-than-expected loss on strong revenue of its core products. That sparked an upgrade at Raymond James from “market perform” to “strong buy.”
Year-to-date, the stock is up more than 52% as investors bet on new products and partnerships, like Sonos’ recent collaboration with Ikea to make speaker-integrated furniture.
Alexis Christoforous is co-anchor of Yahoo Finance’s “The First Trade.” Follow her on Twitter @AlexisTVNews.
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The Sonos Move is the company’s first portable speaker, costs $399
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