Sonos had a rather ignominious birthday last week. At least the company celebrated in style.
When the premium wireless speaker manufacturer published its budgetary results in the second quarter on May 7, exactly a year had passed since a disastrous upgrade of the application.
When Sonos launched the revised version of its application that customers use to control their product, it turned out to be so buggy that many complained to be completely unable to use their systems. The update even ruined the launch of the first business earphones a month later. He finally forced Sonos to cancel other product launches and eliminate his financial forecasts for the year.
Sonos always works outside this hole. But the latest results were a good step in the right direction. Income increased by almost 3% compared to around $ 260 million, beating Wall Street projections. The company also kept the gross margins flat with the previous quarter of 44% – despite a step -up in production to get ahead of the prices that President Trump announced just after the end of the quarter. Sonos’ shares have jumped more than 16% since the report.
The action is still down 42% since the launch of the new application, compared to a 10% gain for the Nasdaq at that time. So, clearly, Sonos still has a lot of work to do. This work fell to Tom Conrad, the long -standing member of the Sonos board of directors who intervened as managing director in January. It was four months busy, Sonos reducing its 12% workforce and Conrad revising the organizational structure. This cleared up layers, combining several commercial units of equipment in one and centralizing the company’s software efforts.
“The progress we have made,” said Conrad in an interview. Software in particular remains a major objective – sounds do not launch new hardware products for the rest of its current exercise, because it focuses on additional software improvements. “My bar is that the application should be fast, reliable and easy to use,” he said.
Will it all work? The Sonos brand has certainly taken a hit, but the damage does not seem permanent or universal. The company summoned solid sales of the ultra arc in the last two quarters, a $ 1,000 television sound bar which was released last fall when Sonos was still faced with the return of its application update.
