Raspberry Pi’s declare to fame is straightforward: it makes low cost, unassuming private computer systems. Oh, and so they’re additionally the scale of your bank card at greatest.
When you take a look at one among their PCs, it appears to be like like a mechanical, uncovered element of a laptop computer that you simply’d in any other case take little interest in.
However that’s precisely Raspberry Pi’s purpose—to show individuals about computing and coding. The Cambridge-based group, based 16 years in the past, is now gearing up for an IPO that’s set to provide the London Inventory Change a much-needed enhance. Its shares have been priced at £2.80 ($3.56) apiece, fetching a market capitalization of about £542 million ($688 million).
Raspberry Pi’s shares jumped 39% in its conditional debut Tuesday morning.
The shares will begin buying and selling unconditionally on June 14.
“In an ever-more-connected world, the market for Raspberry Pi’s high-performance, low-cost computing platforms continues to expand,” Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton stated.
What’s Raspberry Pi anyway?
Raspberry Pi had a humble begin to life as a charity in Cambridge, the place a crew of engineers and laptop scientists got here collectively to create a PC distinctive from others.
It was made to “withstand the rough and tumble of childhood,” because the College of Cambridge places it, and the corporate has now bought over 60 million PCs worldwide because it first went on sale in 2012.
Raspberry Pi’s secret sauce has 4 straightforward but important standards—the PCs should be programmable, enjoyable, inexpensive, and strong.
At the moment, the most affordable Raspberry Pi laptop prices simply $15.
Folks use Raspberry Pi to grasp programming and check {hardware} initiatives and different manufacturing facility equipment.
“As we recognised the potential for affordable technology to make a meaningful difference, not just in education but in countless other contexts, the scale of our ambition grew,” Upton advised the Monetary Instances.
Within the final 12 years, Raspberry Pi has launched a number of fashions, with the earnings going in direction of the eponymous basis—a shareholder with a 73% stake within the firm—to help kids’s schooling. The Raspberry Pi Basis additionally provides free sources and academic packages tailor-made to younger individuals.
The business firm’s income jumped 41% in 2023 to $266 million in comparison with a 12 months earlier, doubling earnings to $38 million.
A registration doc in November valued the corporate at practically $600 million, together with the brand new funds raised, simply as chipmaker Arm purchased a minority stake within the firm.
Chris Ratcliffe—Bloomberg/Getty Pictures
Raspberry Pi goes public
The ultra-niche laptop maker’s IPO has been within the works for just a few months.
Among the many causes it’s being watched carefully is the enhance it might carry the London Inventory Change, which has seen outstanding listings slip by regardless of being inside its grasp (together with Arm’s). Specifically, London has misplaced its attract within the tech world lately.
It’s not been a terrific search for LSE, which has seen some firms wind down their listings simply as IPOs in different European markets have amped up—corresponding to Switzerland’s Galderma Group and Spain’s Puig magnificence group.
Certainly, Raspberry Pi might be a terrific poster baby for reasserting London’s attractiveness as a key European dwelling of tech. The corporate has customers throughout totally different age teams and industries, it’s purpose-driven, and has generated vital income as a result of high quality of its merchandise.
“Strategically, Raspberry Pi’s listing is incredibly important as it would add an established, profitable technology company to the UK market,” Dan Ives, funding analyst at AJ Bell, stated in a word final month.
“London is extremely underweight tech companies versus the US and anything to address this problem is a step in the right direction. In a best-case scenario, if Raspberry Pi’s share price soars at IPO, it could open the floodgates for more tech firms to list in London as it would demonstrate investor enthusiasm for the sector and a willingness to back UK tech champions.”
Raspberry Pi reminds us by no means to underestimate the facility of a easy but efficient product. Whether or not that may assist the U.Okay.’s inventory markets in an equally efficient approach stays to be seen.
