Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Oura makes a small ring. The ring checks your sleep and your heart. Many people wear it every day.
Oura is now selling shares of the company. This is called an IPO. People can buy small pieces of the company.
The company wants to sell shares for 40 to 44 dollars each. Oura could get up to 2.2 billion dollars.
Oura will start trading on Nasdaq soon. Nasdaq is a place where people buy and sell company shares.
- ring
- a small round piece of jewelry worn on a finger
- IPO
- the first time a company sells shares to the public
- share
- a small piece of ownership in a company
- company
- a business that sells products or services
- sleep
- the time when a person rests at night
- heart
- the body part that pumps blood
- Nasdaq
- a stock market where company shares are bought and sold
- billion
- a very large number, one thousand million
Level 2 — Elementary
Oura, the company that makes a popular health tracking ring, is preparing to sell shares to the public for the first time. This process is called an initial public offering, or IPO.
The company is offering 50 million shares priced between 40 and 44 dollars each. If all the shares sell at the top price, Oura could raise about 2.2 billion dollars.
That price range would value Oura at up to 15.6 billion dollars, which is higher than the value of some well known clothing and beauty brands.
Oura plans to begin trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol OURA during the week of September 28. The Oura ring sells for 399 dollars, and customers also pay a monthly membership fee to see their health data.
- initial public offering
- the first sale of a company's shares to the public
- price range
- the lowest and highest possible price for something
- valuation
- an estimate of how much a company is worth
- stock exchange
- a marketplace where shares of companies are traded
- ticker symbol
- the short letter code used to identify a stock
- membership fee
- money paid regularly to belong to a service
- health tracking
- using a device to monitor information about the body
- raise
- to collect money, often by selling shares
Level 3 — Intermediate
Oura, the maker of a smart ring that tracks sleep, heart rate, and recovery, has set terms for an initial public offering that could raise as much as 2.2 billion dollars, one of the largest consumer technology listings of the year.
The company and its existing shareholders are together offering 50 million shares priced between 40 and 44 dollars, with Oura itself selling 13.5 million shares and the rest coming from investors cashing out part of their stakes. Oura will not receive proceeds from the shares sold by existing stockholders.
At the top of that range, the offering would value Oura at roughly 15.6 billion dollars on a fully diluted basis, a figure that investors have noted exceeds the market value of some established lifestyle and beauty companies.
Investor demand appears strong ahead of the listing: pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has signaled interest in buying up to 100 million dollars of shares, while investment firm Dragoneer has expressed interest in as much as 300 million dollars. Oura shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker OURA during the week of September 28.
- initial public offering
- the process by which a private company first sells shares on a public stock exchange
- shareholder
- a person or institution that owns shares in a company
- stake
- a share of ownership or investment in a company
- proceeds
- money received from a sale or transaction
- fully diluted
- a valuation that accounts for all shares that could eventually exist, including options
- lifestyle brand
- a company whose products represent a way of living, not just a function
- investor demand
- how eager buyers are to purchase an asset such as a stock
- listing
- the act of a company's shares becoming available on a stock exchange
Level 4 — Advanced
Oura, the maker of the discreet titanium ring that has become shorthand for the wearable health tracking boom, has set terms for an initial public offering that would value the company at up to 15.6 billion dollars, a figure investors are weighing against comparisons to established lifestyle and apparel names rather than to its narrower category of fitness gadgets.
The structure of the deal, in which Oura is selling 13.5 million primary shares while existing investors offload the remaining 36.5 million, reflects a familiar tension in richly valued private companies going public: the offering both raises fresh capital for the business and allows early backers to realize returns, even as the company itself pockets only a fraction of the roughly 2.2 billion dollars the sale could generate.
Anchor interest from Eli Lilly, which has signaled it may commit up to 100 million dollars, lends the offering a strategic dimension beyond ordinary institutional demand, hinting at how pharmaceutical and consumer health companies increasingly view biometric data platforms as adjacent to their own businesses rather than as mere consumer electronics.
Should Oura price and trade well when it debuts on the Nasdaq under the ticker OURA during the week of September 28, bankers expect the listing to be read as a bellwether for a broader cohort of consumer hardware and health technology companies weighing their own public debuts after a fall marked by renewed investor appetite for new issues.
- shorthand
- a simple way of referring to something complex
- wearable
- a small electronic device worn on the body
- primary shares
- new shares sold by the company itself, raising capital for the business
- offload
- to sell off an asset, often in large quantity
- anchor interest
- a significant early commitment to buy shares that encourages other investors
- biometric
- relating to measurements of the human body
- bellwether
- something that indicates a future trend
- cohort
- a group of people or companies sharing a common characteristic
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