Raspberry Pi boosted by larger than anticipated earnings | USAEMALL.com

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Shares in Raspberry Pi jumped on Tuesday after the UK computer maker reported higher than expected profits in its first earnings report since its debut on the London Stock Exchange in June.

The Cambridge-based company, which makes small, low-cost computers, said sales volumes were slightly lower than expected but weighted towards higher-margin products, boosting profits.

Shares rose 9 per cent to 379p. They floated at 280p in June.

Raspberry Pi’s initial public offering, at a valuation of £542mn, was seen as a rare victory for the London market, which has been struggling to attract listings particularly from technology companies, which generally prefer to list in the US.

Raspberry Pi chief executive Eben Upton said the past three months had shown that listing in London “was the right decision”. He added: “I think we’d be pretty lost in New York.”

The company reported a gross profit of $34.2mn in the first six months of 2024, higher than internal forecasts and a 47 per cent increase on the same period in 2023. Revenue for the period was $144mn, up from $89.3mn last year. It kept its full-year outlook unchanged.

Raspberry Pi began selling its products to the public in 2012. It was set up under the auspices of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK charity founded in 2008 to promote computing to young people.

The microcomputer maker’s IPO raised £178.9mn, including £31.4mn for the company. Raspberry Pi said the funds would be used to fund engineering projects, with multiple new product releases scheduled before the end of 2024.

The company, which released its first subscription-based software product earlier this year, said it intended to further expand its product offerings outside of its signature microcomputers.

Its listing was seen as a boost for the London stock market at a time when the listings market had been very quiet and with technology companies generally seeking to access deeper capital markets and higher valuations in the US.

Cambridge-based chipmaker Arm, one of Raspberry Pi’s shareholders, listed in New York for a $52bn valuation in September 2023.

Upton said there was too much gloom about the prospects of the London stock market.

“I have become more bullish since the IPO about the quality of the domestic investor base here,” he said. “Just because there aren’t a lot of companies like us listed in the UK, doesn’t mean they can’t understand what we do.”