A very strong holiday season for GoPro’s newest Hero 7 lineup of cameras has helped the camera maker turn its first quarterly profit since the third quarter of 2017, the company announced on Wednesday. GoPro pulled in $377 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of last year, and it walked away with a $32 million profit.
This marks the second time GoPro has turned a profit since the third quarter of 2015, back before the company’s ill-fated attempt at entering the drone market.
The Hero 7 Black was announced in September of last year. While it hews closely to the design of its two predecessors, the Hero 5 and Hero 6 Black, the company’s newest flagship offered a number of internal improvements and new features. GoPro had previously said that the Hero 7 Black was the company’s fastest-selling camera ever, and that momentum carried through the 2018 holiday season.
Overall camera sales were up 20 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to the year prior. For the whole year, GoPro’s camera sales were up 9 percent compared to 2017, and total revenue was $1.15 billion. GoPro posted a $94 million loss for the year, which is nearly half the $163 million loss the company suffered in 2017.
The camera company also continued to increase the number of customers for its $5-per-month cloud storage subscription service called GoPro Plus. At the end of 2018, there were 199,000 paid Plus subscribers, according to GoPro, which is up from 185,000 at the end of the third quarter of last year. GoPro recently announced that it removed all storage caps for Plus in a bid to increase that subscription count.
One target GoPro missed in 2018 was trimming its operating expenses. CEO Nick Woodman has said that he wanted to cap the company’s operating expenses at $400 million for the year. Wednesday’s announcement shows that GoPro spent $455 million in 2018, though.
Developing...
from The Verge - Teches http://bit.ly/2DYEM0R
Comments
Post a Comment