GPRO GoPro Inc

GoPro Inc. on Thursday swung to a loss for the fourth straight quarter, ratcheting up the pressure to deliver strong holiday sales of its new cameras.

GoPro also gave downbeat financial projections for the crucial holiday quarter, when GoPro is expected to log nearly half of its revenue for the year.

The company's lackluster results follows fellow gadget maker Fitbit Inc., which lowered its revenue guidance for the holiday quarter by almost 25% on Wednesday.

GoPro, which makes action cameras popular among adrenaline junkies, posted a third-quarter loss of $104 million, or 74 cents a share, compared with a profit of $18.8 million, or 13 cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue declined 40% to $240.6 million, from $400.3 million a year ago.

Analysts projected a per-share loss of 51 cents a share and revenue of $308 million, according to a survey by FactSet.

For the full year, GoPro expects to log $1.25 billion to $1.3 billion in revenue, which is below the company's previous target of $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion. For the fourth quarter, the company projected revenue between $600 million and $650 million; analysts were at $657 million.

Shares of GoPro, which have fallen 88% from their 2014 high, dropped another 20% to $9.60 in after-hours trading.

GoPro's loss wasn't a surprise: it has been investing heavily in its two new cameras and its first drone. GoPro announced the products in late September, but didn't start selling them until October, meaning that their sales weren't reflected in GoPro's third-quarter sales.

Chief Executive Nick Woodman has said the new products will give his company a lift in the holiday season, "a quarter where we expect to return to profitability." On Thursday, Mr. Woodman pushed out the time frame for profits. "Looking forward to 2017, we expect to return to profitability."

Sales of the new cameras are off to a rocky start. GoPro temporarily stopped selling them on Amazon.com Inc. in mid-October as it negotiated pricing with the e-commerce giant. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for GoPro said the company had resumed selling its camera on Amazon.com.

GoPro faces pressure to demonstrate there is a more mainstream market for its cameras beyond its adrenaline-addicted core. But as it tries to go more mainstream, it faces competition from do-it-all smartphones from tech giants such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Corp.

In the third quarter, GoPro shipped 1.02 milion devices, 36% fewer than the 1.59 million it shipped during the year-ago period.

Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, GoPro said it would have reported a loss of 60 cents a share, compared with a profit of 25 cents a share in the same quarter a year earlier on that basis. Analysts had expected a loss of 36 cents a share on that basis.

Write to Georgia Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 03, 2016 17:05 ET (21:05 GMT)

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