Why Oura delayed its IPO
Source: Fortune ·
Oura, the smart ring maker, cited “uncertainty” as its reason for delaying its much-anticipated public offering.
From the source
I was wrong. A few weeks ago, on my merry way to vacation, I wrote about Oura’s pending IPO and how, amazingly, in the AI era it was a smart ring maker we could rely on to take the go-public plunge. Not anymore: On Sept. 29, after a much-anticipated roadshow, Oura CEO Tom Hale delayed the plan, citing “uncertainty in the IPO market.” The obvious question: why get so close, then back off at the last minute? My colleague Morgan Chittum, who just joined Fortune and who Term Sheet readers will be hearing a lot more from soon, dug into this question in a recent piece. For one, she found, valuation proved tricky. As she writes, breaking down the numbers: Oura had proposed selling 50 million shares at $40 to $44 apiece. At the $42 midpoint, the deal would have raised roughly $2.1 billion in gross proceeds. At the top end of the range, Oura would have had a fully diluted valuation of $15.6 billion. That might be too pricey for a company whose core product is an electronic ring. But the…