Fitness tracker manufacturer Fitbit is expected to price its planned initial public offering from $14 per share to $16 per share, according to a filing submitted by the company to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Fitbit is looking to sell a total of 22.4 million shares, and its current shareholders are expected to sell an additional 7.5 million shares. At the middle of the expected price range, the valuation of Fitbit will be at almost $3.1 billion.
The company can raise up to a total of $358.4 million through the sale of its shares in the IPO, though it will not be receiving any of the proceeds from the sale of the 7.5 million shares that are already owned by current investors.
Fitbit will offer two stock classes upon listing, with Class B shares holding 10 times more voting power compared to Class A shares. This would results in insiders maintaining control over the company after the IPO.
San Francisco-based Fitbit, which revealed its plans to go public last month, started in 2007. The fitness trackers that Fitbit sells provides users with information that helps them track their physical activities and other health-related information such as burned calories and heart rate.
Since its launch eight years ago, Fitbit claimed that it has sold over 20.8 million devices, which range from the simplest activity trackers to complex sports watches. Last year, Fitbit said that it raked in revenues of $745.4 million.
Fitbit will be launching its IPO in the midst of intensifying competition within the wearable device industry from companies such as Apple, Samsung and Microsoft.
Jawbone, one of the company's biggest rivals in the fitness tracker space, has even filed a lawsuit against the company in late May, claiming that Fitbit has been poaching employees and stealing trade secrets from Jawbone.
According to the lawsuit, Fitbit is targeting Jawbone employees to transfer to them, and that the employees download confidential information from Jawbone databases before leaving and then pass on the trade secrets to Fitbit.
The lawsuit is a sudden problem and a massive distraction to the planned IPO of Fitbit, which claims to have the best-selling fitness trackers in the industry. Data from the NPD Group state that Fitbit has a market share of 85 percent.
