Fitbit IPO Valuation Expected to Reach $3.7 Billion

The health tracker company is expected to start trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FIT."

Chris Newmarker

Wearable health and fitness trackers certainly aren't small potatoes, if Fitbit's IPO is any indication.

The company in a June 15 SEC filing increased the initial price per share in the IPO to $17-$19 per share, up from a previous initial price of $14-$16. The new price would give Fitbit (San Francisco) a valuation around $3.7 billion, with the company fetching around $600 million from the sale.

That would make it one of the biggest tech debuts of the year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Fitbit's stock is expected to start trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FIT."

Founded in 2007, Fitbit has enjoyed remarkable success. As of the end of March, it had sold over 20.8 million devices, according to an SEC filing.

Fitbit nearly tripled its sales to $745 million in 2014--and also turned its first annual profit, earning nearly $132 million. It earned $48 million off $337 million in sales during the first quarter of 2015, up from $9 million in profits off $109 million in revenue during the same period a year before.

Still, Fitbit itself acknowledges that it is in a highly competitive market that includes specialized consumer electronics companies such as Garmin, Jawbone, and Misfit, and traditional health and fitness companies such as adidas and Under Armour. On top of that, large, broad-based consumer electronics companies including Apple, Google, LG, Microsoft, and Samsung are getting into the game.

Most notable is the recently released Apple Watch, which could potentially swamp Fitbit and other smaller companies in the same way that the iPhone outmoded Nokia and BlackBerry.

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

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