Sonos Goes Public with $100 Million IPO

[gene]

Sonos has filed a $100 million initial public offering, and will join the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SONO. The company has seen growth since incorporating Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant into its newest products, but the risks of doing so may eventually outweigh the benefits. Will Sonos be a stock market success, or has it made too many compromises in order to stay relevant?

Read: Sonos Goes Public $100 Million IPO

 

[Montucky]

Interesting news. I sure hope they do well! That said, I really like the products and the team over at Sonos and hope they don't end up having to compromise too much in an effort to continually chase never-ending quarterly profit increases as we see happen all too often after companies go public.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

With 14 mils Net loss last year and this year further profits could be eroded thanks to trade wars, this trading would be purely based on hype and boolshit valuations, which include stuff like the value of brand etc...

 

[panteragstk]

With 14 mils Net loss last year and this year further profits could be eroded thanks to trade wars, this trading would be purely based on hype and boolshit valuations, which include stuff like the value of brand etc...

This and their competition has increased dramatically. From the reviews I've read they are still king, but with many more options that are much cheaper I have to think they are losing some business to the competition.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

This and their competition has increased dramatically. From the reviews I've read they are still king, but with many more options that are much cheaper, I have to think they are losing some business to the competition.

very good points.

 

[CB22]

hope they don't end up having to compromise too much in an effort to continually chase never-ending quarterly profit increases as we see happen all too often after companies go public.

Fingers crossed, it will be interesting to see what happens.

 

[Montucky]

This and their competition has increased dramatically. From the reviews I've read they are still king, but with many more options that are much cheaper I have to think they are losing some business to the competition.

They DEFINITELY have more competition than before, but no other company has built a product line that works so cohesively not only with each other, but with so many different streaming services...all in one app. While the speaker line itself is "ok" (the Play:5 really is superb though), the software is great overall, playing pretty nicely on most platforms. Personally I use it from my PC, my family iMac, my Android phone, and iOS (an iPad). Works pretty great on everything. I use a Sonos Connect to stream music to my high end set up in my dining room for the family to enjoy while eating dinner, with a Play:5 in my kitchen (which I really ended up LOVING),for a seamless experience across the house.

At our house, we use Google Play Music, Amazon Prime, Audible, and Tidal. Being able to search all services in one go for a particular artist, album, or track is SUCH a killer feature. Not sure if anybody else does this?

While I am disappointed in a lack of proper hi-res support for my Connect (something Denon Heos DOES support, along with my Yamaha WXC-50),I have come to accept the compromises for the ease of use for my family. Even my wife loves using the app. We've tried a ton of other brands over the years, and she (my resident layman) loves Sonos and did not like anything else from a user standpoint, and I tend to agree. This is the ace up Sonos' sleeve that puts them head and shoulders over the competition. As long as they can keep this competitive edge (and make the consuming public fully aware of these advantages),they hopefully stand to do pretty well.

MESSAGE TO THE SONOS BOARD OF DIRECTORS: If you guys dare sacrifice Sonos' level of quality, then there WILL be a revolt. The products and software are all made really well. Please keep it that way.

 

[panteragstk]

They DEFINITELY have more competition than before, but no other company has built a product line that works so cohesively not only with each other, but with so many different streaming services...all in one app. While the speaker line itself is "ok" (the Play:5 really is superb though), the software is great overall, playing pretty nicely on most platforms. Personally I use it from my PC, my family iMac, my Android phone, and iOS (an iPad). Works pretty great on everything. I use a Sonos Connect to stream music to my high end set up in my dining room for the family to enjoy while eating dinner, with a Play:5 in my kitchen (which I really ended up LOVING),for a seamless experience across the house.

At our house, we use Google Play Music, Amazon Prime, Audible, and Tidal. Being able to search all services in one go for a particular artist, album, or track is SUCH a killer feature. Not sure if anybody else does this?

While I am disappointed in a lack of proper hi-res support for my Connect (something Denon Heos DOES support, along with my Yamaha WXC-50),I have come to accept the compromises for the ease of use for my family. Even my wife loves using the app. We've tried a ton of other brands over the years, and she (my resident layman) loves Sonos and did not like anything else from a user standpoint, and I tend to agree. This is the ace up Sonos' sleeve that puts them head and shoulders over the competition. As long as they can keep this competitive edge (and make the consuming public fully aware of these advantages),they hopefully stand to do pretty well.

MESSAGE TO THE SONOS BOARD OF DIRECTORS: If you guys dare sacrifice Sonos' level of quality, then there WILL be a revolt. The products and software are all made really well. Please keep it that way.

This is pretty much what the reviews say. I've been considering Sonos for quite some time, but haven't taken the leap just because I can't think of when I'd actually use it.

 

[Montucky]

This is pretty much what the reviews say. I've been considering Sonos for quite some time, but haven't taken the leap just because I can't think of when I'd actually use it.

If you use one system at a time, then I'd say it may not be worth it. However, if you like to listen to something around your house, it's pretty slick. Many people start with just one speaker, then add another zone, then another, and eventually end up with a whole home audio setup. Had one customer who started with a little Play:1. Then he upgraded to a 3, then a 5, demoted the 1 to the bathroom and the 3 to a bedroom. Got addicted almost. Ended up having like 12 zones within a year's time. Haha.

To me, one of its best, lesser known features is if you have a Playbar somewhere in the mix, you can pipe that TV's audio to the rest of your house or to outdoor speakers, which is REALLY nice if you're watching sports and don't wanna miss a beat. I'll fully admit the point that across the board you can do better for your money with any given product, but it's the usability you're paying for. The company spends an ungodly amount on software development and product engineering, and it shows.

I do believe they also have some of the best reliability in the industry as well. I've sold, installed and serviced countless Sonos products. I have never had one single defect. Ever. Considering the sheer amount of Sonos I've seen in the area I serviced, that always blew me away. At least in our neck of the woods, the product was definitely a hot seller. Mostly for use in vacation rentals, so it made sense. Total reliability with the fewest service calls as even guests had no trouble using the system, which is really very telling of how good a UI is, since most tourons leave their brains at home when they go on vacation. Haha.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

While I am disappointed in a lack of proper hi-res support for my Connect (something Denon Heos DOES support, along with my Yamaha WXC-50),I have come to accept the compromises for the ease of use for my family.

HiRes I could live without, but does it support lossless formats, specifically flac?

 

[Montucky]

HiRes I could live without, but does it support lossless formats, specifically flac?

While it does support the FLAC format, I just tried it out with some of my hi-res tracks and it didn't want to play nice with all of them. It would give me an error message saying it exceeded the max supported bit rate. Doh!
Hopefully transcoding will happen someday, but it does not appear to downsample my files on the fly like I would like it to. Now what I CAN do is plug in my Hi-Res media player (I use a Sony HAP-Z1ES) into the Line-In on my Connect and that would do the trick. I suppose I could also plug in my Yamaha WXC into it as well and control it remotely, but that reintroduces the nuisance of redudant apps. Another possibility that could work easily enough I suppose is just use Plex which DOES transcode beautifully to just about any device, and the Sonos app does indeed have baked in Plex support, so perhaps I'll try that next for giggles.

Honestly though, I guess I hadn't even experiment with that until now due to the fact that when I want to sit down and zone out with my hi-res music, I'm using a more dedicated, higher end system. Sonos is for my casual listening, ie the kitchen, the back deck, cleaning the house, etc. Don't get me wrong. My wife is PERFECTLY content with Sonos as their primary, as are most people. I'm just more a sicko about it all, as many of us here are. Haha.

 

[Paul Lane]

If only Sonos sounded better and at an Audiophile level..

 

[lovinthehd]

HiRes I could live without, but does it support lossless formats, specifically flac?

FLAC containing what content, tho?

Sent from my SM-J337V using Tapatalk

 

[GO-NAD!]

If only Sonos sounded better and at an Audiophile level..

I've ripped my entire CD collection and stored it on a NAS, in FLAC format. I stream through my 2-channel system and it sounds as "audiophile" as playing the original CD's.

 

[lovinthehd]

FWIW the stock was offered at $15, has ranged from 15.51 to 23.60 and sits now at 18.40.

 

[snakeeyes]

I’m willing to buy stock in companies I recognize and I think will do well, but not sure Sonos is something I want to do well. Conflicted...

 

[lovinthehd]

If Sonos had done the IPO before the competition had settled in more I might have been tempted....but I think they waited too long.