Arlo And Sonos Make Hardware IPOs Look Just Fine

Morning Report: It’s early days, but so far so good for recent hardware IPOs Arlo and Sonos.

After the cratering results of GoPro and FitBit, successfully pitching a hardware company seemed about as reasonable as getting another meal kit company public or flash storage shop live.

So much for the tea leaves. The Sonos and Arlo IPOs point to healthy market demand for technology shares, even for companies in niches that aren’t as popular as SaaS.

Here’s how things have gone so far for Sonos:

• Sonos pro: Priced at $15 per share, opened at $16, and is now worth $20.46 as of the time of writing.
• Sonos con: Its target range of $17 to $19 takes some of the shine off Sonos’s results; it hadn’t wanted to start for so cheap.

And Arlo:

• Arlo pro: Priced at $16 per share, opened at $18.50, and is worth $21.34 as of the time of writing.
• Arlo con: The firm targeted an $18 to $20 per-share IPO price range. So Arlo has done well so far, but from a reduced expectations base.

You can see the theme. Both companies had to take some dollars off their value to go public, but since that point, things have gone well in terms of market response. Going public is the first step in a new life for a firm, but this pair of results is a success and a slightly surprising one at that.

From The Crunchbase Daily:

Samumed raises $438M at $12B valuation

• Samumed, a San Diego-based biotech startup developing a range of therapies based on tissue regeneration, has raised $438 million in fresh funding at a valuation of $12 billion. The latest financing brings total capital raised to more than $650 million.

Arlo IPO closes higher

• Shares of Arlo Technologies, a maker of video monitoring systems for home security, rose 38 percent in first-day trading Friday to close over $20 each. Just before that, the Silicon Valley priced shares for its IPO at $16 apiece, under its expected range of $18 to $20.

BlaBlaCar buys BeepCar

• Paris-based BlaBlaCar, a carpooling platform that has raised over $300 million in funding to date, agreed to buy Russia’s BeepCar, another carpool app, from Mail.ru.

Surterra raises $65M for medical marijuana

• Surterra Wellness, an Atlanta-based medical cannabis startup, has raised $65 million in a Series C round. William Wrigley Jr. II, former CEO of the Wrigley gum and confections company, led the round and will become Surterra’s board chairman.

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