Oura delays its IPO, blaming Wall Street jitters despite 90% growth

Oura has delayed its initial public offering, pointing to uncertainty in the US stock market. The smart ring maker gave no new date. It said its business remains strong, with revenues expected to grow by 90 percent this year and paid membership now at 5.7 million.

Tom Hale, Oura's chief executive officer, put the decision in a statement: "Our mission is to empower people to live healthier [and] longer, and an IPO is just one step in our journey." He said the company aims to deliver an extraordinary IPO for its employees and investors.

Hale added that Oura has "the luxury of choosing our moment". In the meantime, he said, the company will execute against the opportunities ahead. The statement offers no timetable and does not say what conditions would bring the listing back.

What the offering would have raised

Oura and its early investors had planned to sell 50 million shares between them, priced in a range of $40 to $44 each. At the midpoint of that range the sale would have raised $2.1 billion in total. That is the deal now on hold.

The range valued the business at about $15 billion on a fully diluted basis. We covered the pricing when it was set, in our report on how the Oura IPO valuation stacked up against Prada and Lululemon.

Oura also said customer response to its latest offering has been "exceptionally strong". It did not say in the statement how many paid members it had before that launch, so the rise to 5.7 million cannot be measured against a starting point.

The 90 percent revenue growth is a forecast for this year, not a reported result. Oura gave no revenue figure in the statement, so the growth rate has no base to be measured against. Delaying a listing while forecasting near doubling is the tension here.

A market that is high but unsettled

The open question is the health of the market. Stocks are near highs, but investors are still weighing where the economy is headed. Consumer spending has been strong, yet inflation is up, and the war with Iran has raised gas prices.

Political risk is also on the table, with control of Congress up for grabs in the midterm elections. AI, meanwhile, seems intent on consuming nearly everybody's bandwidth. Oura did not name any of these as its specific reason, citing volatility in general terms.

Oura was founded in Finland and is now based in San Francisco. It is one of very few start-ups in wearable technology to have succeeded in a field where giants such as Apple, with the Apple Watch, are mostly the ones that have.

The company describes its mission as to "give the body a voice". Its products track sleep, activity, stress, heart health and much more, using 50 metrics and predictive insights. That data-led pitch underpinned the valuation investors were being asked to accept.

Oura is not the only company weighing a listing. We have reported on Wella's US IPO filing, Fosun's Club Med filing in Hong Kong and Accor's Ennismore IPO deliberations. Oura's delay shows how quickly a window can narrow after pricing has been set.

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Image: Courtesy of Oura