GoPro Earnings, Shares Going Out Of Focus; Investors And Analysts Worried About Company’s Continued Downfall

By Roemart Tamayo | Oct 29, 2015 07:11 PM EDT

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GoPro's camera may be everywhere, but according to reports, the company is actually having a bad year in terms of earnings.

According to Fortune, the video camera company's shares went down after it announced that its earnings fell short of its expectations. As noted, GoPro shares quickly dropped by 17 percent after hours, trading in at $24.84.

In addition, the action-camera company said that although revenue rose by 43 percent to $400 million, it missed its own estimate of $430 million to $445 million. And adjusted profit per share was 25 cents short of the projected 29 cents to 32 cents per share.

Moreover, GoPro blamed the miss on "lighter than anticipated" sales and a $19 million charge from lowering the price of the GoPro Hero4 Session, its first camera aimed at regular users, instead of its usual "thrill-seeking" customers.

In the company's earnings release, company chief executive officer Nicolas Woodman said, "I am proud of our year-to-date accomplishments in which we posted strong financial results and expanded our portfolio of products, however our business in the third quarter was clearly more difficult than anticipated."

The GoPro Hero4 Session camera was introduced this summer and was subsequently relaunched at a lower price point of $299. It is priced between the HERO4 Silver and HERO+ and now, the camera is in a good position for the holidays according to a note by the company and added that it is selling as expected.

Woodman also commented on an earnings call with analysts and investors that the company probably spent too little on marketing, regarding the last couple of quarters which affected the demand negatively. In addition to that, he also said that the new product release schedule was also a bit different compared to last year's.

In a similar report by Forbes, Investors now have sent GoPro's stock down 53 percent this year amid questions about the demand for wearable cameras. As an added concern, investors are also wondering whether consumers will start buying based on price as they are given more options from competitors.

However, Woodman said that "We take this situation very seriously, we made some mistakes and we have taken corrective actions," the New York Post has learned.

He said the Hero4 Session is actually his favorite camera in the GoPro's entire lineup. As proof, he told the analysts, "This week, I surfed for eight-and-a-half hours in one day" and boasted that despite the lengthy surfing session, the camera only used about 20 percent of its battery life.

Nevertheless, GoPro's continues to suffer dwindling sales as competitors offer cameras which added features such as virtual-reality videos.

However, GoPro countered that the company will also launch VR products and are slated for a 2016 release.

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