About the GoPro Inc. group:

The GoPro Inc. group is specialised in the manufacturing and sales of photo and video equipment. However although the major part of its activity concerns the camera itself, another part is responsible for the manufacturing and sales of accessories related to it.

With a total of 970 employees around the world, the GoPro group has experienced growing success over recent years due to the sales of a portable camera bearing the same name.

The major competitors of GoPro:

The GoPro Company only produces one single type of product with which it has achieved an incredible success; this is the wearable camera of the same name. However, since the beginning of the GoPro wave of success certain large names in the digital photography sector are itching to claim this part of the market that has been taken by the current market leader in this sector, GoPro.

This is notably the case with the Kodak and Sony companies that have both created their own ranges of sports cameras over recent years which are similar in many ways to those of GoPro.  

GoPro also faces growing competition from companies that undercut the sales price of their cameras. Certain companies such as Xiaomi, from China, are trying to position themselves on the market with cameras that are as effective as those of GoPro but are available at unbeatable prices.

It is therefore essential to be knowledgeable about their competitors before launching into trading GoPro shares on the stock markets.

The major partners of GoPro:

In 2016 GoPro and the Red Bull group announced the implementation of a worldwide partnership aimed at content publishing as well as related cross linked distribution and promotion. In this way Red Bull obtained part of GoPro which, in exchange, became the unique supplier to the brand of content production technology.

Still in 2016, the Periscope Company also became a partner of GoPro with a compatibility update of its application for the more recent GoPro cameras. The objective of this manoeuvre relating to the content publishing platform was of course to boost the real time display in the extreme sports sector and thereby attract more users.

Economic and financial history of the GoPro company

To better understand what may have affected the price of GoPro Inc’s shares during the last years, it is imperative to compare the economic and financial events that took place at that time with the stock markets charts. Here are some dates that you should know.

• It was in 2002 that the idea of the first GoPro appeared thanks to Nick Woodman. Who directed FunBug.com at that time, a company that sells advertising spaces online. Back from India where he was surfing, he created his first waterproof camera with wrist attachment that will later became GoPro Hero 35mm released in 2004. This camera only took photos, but it announced an undeniable success of the GoPro concept.
• In 2005, Nick Woodman created Woodman Labs and started distributing his cameras. He distributed them for free to athletes for testing, which quickly attracted extreme sports fans who used these cameras to immortalize and share their exploits on social networks and video sharing sites.
• In 2011, an investment session in GoPro attracted several venture capital companies such as Steamboat Ventures
• Always in 2011, GoPro bought CineForm and on the same occassion the CineForm 444 video codec, used in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. This codec had the peculiarity of making HD and 3D faster and more practical without sacrificing the quality of the image. This one was integrated to the system of the GoPro Hero 3 shortly after this company was bought.
• In 2012, the GoPro company had already sold more than 3 million cameras worldwide and launched the third generation of the mini camera HD Hero. More compact than the previous one, it also includes a Wi-fi controller and allows you to record videos up to a definition of 4K or a high resolution with a burst mode of 15 images per second.
• In 2013, the GoPro group published a takedown DMCA review on the Digitalrev.com site which attacked the brand by comparing it to a copyright infringement. The notice in question was finally withdrawn 10 days later on the grounds of a wrong application.
• In 2014, the GoPro group was finally introduced to the stock market with a fundraising of 427 million dollars, valuing the capitalization of the company to more than 2.95 billion dollars.
• In May 2015, The GoPro group acquired the French company Kolor, specialized in video and software for videos at 360.
• In 2016, GoPro bought two startups for more than 105 million dollars, Stupeflix and Vemory which edited the replay and splice tools.
• In 2016, GoPro tried to revive its activity by presenting a fifth generation of cameras and starts producing drones with the Karma model. The group has also created a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, where it shares the best videos and shots of its customers.

The strengths and advantages of GoPro shares as a stock market asset:

We shall commence this comparative analysis with a detailed summary of the strong points of the GoPro group as follows:

• Firstly, the group benefits from a brand name that is highly popular in its activity sector.  GoPro is actually the most well known brand name worldwide which represents significant value for this company and notably enables it to continuously attract numerous prospects.
• The GoPro Group also manages to differentiate itself from its major competitors through its highly technological products and significant investments in research and development. Among the most popular devices of this brand we find the Grand Angle technologies, the slowdown function, the 1080 high definition and the 4K.
• The fact that the products sold by GoPro are particularly polyvalent is another major advantage for this group that you should take into account when making decisions.  In fact, the GoPro camera is often offered for sale with various accessories such as brackets and straps that enable different viewpoints. For the company this represents supplementary sources of income and therefore a real advantage in terms of profitability.  Among the accessories the most sold for this brand we particularly find the selfies sticks and drones that are currently experiencing an increasing success.
• Still related to the advantages of this company and its products we note the quality of the latter. In fact, the products developed and sold by GoPro offer numerous qualities such as a long life, a waterproofing that enables them to be used even under water and a great resistance to dust and shocks.

The weak points and disadvantages of the GoPro share as a stock market asset:

As you may have noted the advantages of the GoPro Group in its activity sector and market are numerous. But the weak points of this company should not be neglected and these we shall now explore in detail:

• Firstly, concerning the industry in this activity sector, the GoPro Group displays a certain tardiness relating to the ROE and the ROA compared to its competitors. This is easily explained by the fact that the investments undertaken by GoPro relating to research and development are quite sizeable and therefore lower the profitability of this company over the short and medium term.
• The second major weak point of GoPro concerns its pricing policy. In fact, although its products are of a particularly high quality that justifies the high price to a certain degree the competition in this sector is significant with products of a high enough quality to be able to offer similar products at lower prices.
• This brings us to the last weak point that we will examine here individually and it relates to the general competition in this activity sector and the indirect competition.  This indirect competition is particularly due to the current boom in smartphones that are increasingly advanced technologically and are equipped with cameras that offer high resolution thereby avoiding the requirement for the user to possess an external camera.