Fitbit lists Apple Watch as risk to investors in IPO filing

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Apple Watch Activity
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Fitbit is looking to make a splash on Wall Street by filing to go public. The company behind the Flex activity trackers announced it is looking to raise $100 million in an initial public offering later this year.

Fitbit sold 10.2 million devices last year, and is the first wearable technology company to go public. But now that Apple Watch is available to the public, Fibit is warning investors in its filing that it could potentially be “more competitive than our products and services.”

Full quote below:

“Apple has recently introduced the Apple Watch smartwatch, with broad-based functionalities, including some health and fitness tracking capabilities. We also compete with a wide range of stand-alone health and fitness-related mobile apps that can be purchased or downloaded through mobile app stores. We believe many of our competitors and potential competitors have significant competitive advantages, including longer operating histories, ability to leverage their sales efforts and marketing expenditures across a broader portfolio of products and services, larger and broader customer bases, more established relationships with a larger number of suppliers, contract manufacturers, and channel partners, greater brand recognition, ability to leverage app stores which they may operate, and greater financial, research and development, marketing, distribution, and other resources than we do.”

The filing also pinpoints distribution as another potential area where competitors could beat the company in sales, as well as competitors’ ability to build products that are superior to Fitbits.

Even though titans like Apple, Google, and Samsung are moving into the wearables market, Fitbit still sees plenty of room for growth, with experts predicting fitness tracker units sold to hit 70 million by 2018.

Last year the Fitbit raked in $745 million in revenue, with $132 million of net income. The company’s shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ‘FIT’.

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