Is it the market, or is it something else that’s putting off the ‘sure’ IPOs? The smart money was betting that the Oura health monitoring ring would have IPO’d on Wednesday (30 Sept) for about $2.1 billion. The employees holding restricted stock units (RSU) and investors would be counting their money by now. After all, Oura has been profitable this year after breaking even in 2025, and there was real enthusiasm when it filed its SEC S-1 right before Labor Day. But on 29 September, when the offering was scheduled to price, it was postponed. Indefinitely.
The Oura press release cited “that it is postponing its previously announced initial public offering on Nasdaq, despite strong demand, due to uncertainty in the IPO market”. No new date was given. Uncertainty is a factor, but there are others specific to Oura.
If you read Endpoints, they cited the Federal Reserve raising its rates a few weeks ago, depressing demand for the rich valuation Oura was seeking; the P(doom) around AI; and Apple introducing a new Watch with improved sensors and an option to order blood tests, as Oura has. There are rumors that Apple will also develop a faceless watch that will copy everything that Oura has. That’s a lot of putting off right there.
Ace investigator Sergei Polevikov in his AI Health Uncut of 29 September digs considerably deeper. Non-subscribers to his Substack platform will see some of this but his main points are that the oversubscribing level was weak at ~4x whereas ~20x for large offerings has been the norm since 2023. Three early VCs-Forerunner, Lifeline, and Elysian Park Ventures–were seeking to exit, never a good sign, and taking $1.53 billion with them. The IPO is also being built on Oura’s promise to deliver predictive health. Whether a ring–a piece of Finnish jewelry–can deliver that and more, reliably and interestingly to a growing user base, is a real question.
What 4x versus 20x says is that this IPO is a ‘nice to have’, not a ‘must have’. No one here has FOMO–fear of missing out.
There are hardware issues–and hardware is the vast bulk of its sales with service subscriptions only 19.8% of revenue.
Last but certainly not least, Oura’s benefit in going public on Nasdaq would largely have gone to the Taxman. Little known fact unless you’ve Been There, Done That: RSUs are treated as employee pay when they vest. The tax is withheld, just like wages. It becomes the employer responsibility, not the employee’s. In net settlement, Oura pays the tax in cash from its IPO proceeds and keeps part of the shares to cover the tax. (That doesn’t count what states do with RSUs nor how laws differ internationally.)
The line on the bottom for Oura after the IPO? The company nets only a paltry $6.2 million because of investor payoff and employee RSU taxation. That is over 98% of the proceeds going to everyone but Oura.
Have other IPOs been like this? Not many. Evidently a lot of pay went to RSUs spread generously around, not just executive staff. This IPO evidently is to help three major VCs exit nicely–and a ~4x oversubscription wasn’t enough.
Another Ominous Parallel with an IPO that some of us remember: Peloton, once a fitness darling. There are similarities (the enthusiasm, the unfavorable hardware issues, the imbalance between hardware and subscription revenue, unsustainable growth beyond enthusiasts) and differences (the Oura Ring is under $400, a Peloton machine over $2,000, and Oura is profitable). But you’ll have to subscribe (and you should!!) to Sergei’s Substack to see all of his finely worked out and fully buttressed argument.
Oura is not exactly hurting for financing, having raised $1.5 billion over the past decade, with a jumbo $900 million Series E last October led by Fidelity, and an undisclosed corporate round this past July led by Eli Lilly, neither of which are exiting. Crunchbase
Will Oura IPO this year or next? This Editor cannot see anything that was cited as changing the picture if the IPO were tomorrow or in the next few months. Also Mobihealthnews
About the Anthropic IPO, the financial press is agog with talk that its engines may restart by mid-November. The date is rumored to be 9 November. Anthropic executives will meet with investors on 14 October to build a case for a $2 trillion offering, which would be an all-time record for an IPO.
Readers know that the IPO talk, explored since May, came to a screeching halt right around 9/11 with the talk of P(doom) [TTA 17 Sept] and Federal regulation. Some believe that these ‘external brakes’ were applied because neither Anthropic nor OpenAI were ready to IPO and it was easier to create Doom than to postpone directly. But here we have it at least for Anthropic, even if the fundamentals scream “warning”! Certainly the incentive to beat OpenAI to the IPO is still there. Anthropic, which was created by OpenAI bolters, surely want to ring that bell on either Nasdaq or NYSE (another small matter to finalize) before Sam Altman. Here we go again! Yahoo Finance
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