IPO Media & entertainment tech Public Markets

VIZIO Stock Opens Nearly 17% Below IPO Price

Smart TV maker VIZIO opened at $17.50 on its first day of  trading on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, nearly 17 percent below its offer price.

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The company priced its shares at $21 on Wednesday, at the low-end of the $21 to $23 price range it had previously set, and raised about $257 million through its IPO.

The Irvine, California-based company filed to go public earlier this month, reporting its total revenue for 2020 at $2 billion, up about 11 percent from the previous year. The IPO comes after media and entertainment saw an increase in interest during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people were stuck at home and needed entertainment. VIZIO wrote in its S-1 filing that it also saw an increase in consumer demand as a result of the pandemic. The company also revealed that it had sold more than 81 million TVs and almost 12 million soundbars since being founded in 2002.

VIZIO’s IPO is the company’s second attempt to go public. It initially filed for an IPO in 2015 before Chinese technology company LeEco announced plans to acquire it. Those plans ended up falling through.

Among the largest shareholders in VIZIO are AmTRAN Technology Co., Q-Run Holdings and V-TW Holdings, according to the company’s S-1 filing.

VIZIO joins a slew of other tech companies taking advantage of the hot IPO market and going public. Companies including Compass, ThredUp and Coinbase have filed to go public in recent weeks (Coinbase through a direct listing). 

Opening below its IPO price is slightly out of the norm for a tech company these days — most have seen their stock surge on the first day of trading. DigitalOcean also saw its stock open and close below its IPO price when it debuted on the NYSE Wednesday.

This story will be updated with VIZIO’s closing stock price when the market closes Thursday.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

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