Oura wants $40 to $44 a share. Three of five similar sales priced above the range.
Oura, the smart ring maker, is selling shares on Nasdaq for the first time. Its banks set the final price once orders are in.
What happened
Oura launched its first public share sale on : 50 million shares at an expected $40 to $44 each, to list on Nasdaq as OURA.
Oura launched its first public share sale on . It offers 50 million shares at an expected $40 to $44 each. The company sells 13.5 million of them, and existing shareholders sell the other 36.5 million. The shares will list on Nasdaq under the name OURA. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan lead the banks.
At the top of the range the sale raises about $2.2bn. Reuters puts the value of the whole company at up to $15.62bn, against about $11bn in a private funding round last year. In the nine months to , Oura’s revenue rose 74% to $1.21bn, and it made a profit of $60.8m.
Two large buyers have said they may take part. Eli Lilly has shown interest in buying up to $100m of shares, and funds of the investment firm Dragoneer up to $300m. Neither promise is binding. Robinhood is one of the banks on the sale, and on its app showed an interview with Oura’s chief executive, Tom Hale.
Reuters called the sale a test for new listings after a slow start to the autumn. It wrote that worries about AI shares, rising bond yields and Federal Reserve rate rises had kept markets “jittery”. Samuel Kerr of Mergermarket said a strong start “will encourage other issuers”, while a weak one “might set alarm bells ringing”.
The price is not set yet. The banks collect orders from investors, and the company and banks then choose the price. Oura has not published a pricing date, and its prospectus leaves the delivery date blank. By Oura had filed no change to its $40 to $44 range.
Sources: Oura (2, 3, 4), Reuters
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a US company raising more than $1bn in its first share sale set a price range, and a news report said before pricing that orders were bigger than the shares on offer. We found five since 2019. None priced below the range. Three priced above it, and in those three the orders were reported at 20 times the shares or more. Oura has not said how big its orders are.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
History points to a price at or above the top of the range. In the five cases none priced below it, and four of five opened above the sale price. The three sales priced above the range all had orders reported at 20 times the shares or more.
The record is small and leans on sales with very large order books. The one case with a smaller reported book, Uber in 2019, priced near the bottom of its range in a nervous market and opened below. Oura has not said how big its orders are, and Reuters describes this month’s market as jittery. The final prospectus will show the price.
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