Raspberry Pi profits surge after IPO thanks to new single-board computer
- Raspberry Pi’s adjusted profit in the first half of the year before the bad effects rose 55%
- Orders for single-board computers and computer modules rose to 3.7 million
Raspberry Pi profits soared in the first half of 2024 as the group benefited from strong demand for one of its recently launched single-board computers.
The budget computer maker, which went public in London in June, reported adjusted profits that rose 55 percent to $20.9 million (£15.6 million) in the six months to June.
The company told shareholders it sold 1.1 million units of its Raspberry Pi5 in the period following the product’s introduction in late October last year.
Results: Raspberry Pi reported its adjusted profit before the nasties, which rose 55 percent to $20.9 million in the six months ended June
As a result, orders for single-board computers and computer modules increased by almost a third to 3.7 million.
Raspberry Pi also benefited from growth in semiconductor sales to 2.1 million units and recovery from pandemic-related shortages that limited trading in the first half of 2023.
Revenue rose 61 percent to $144 million. More than half of the increase came from component sales. The volume of microchips shipped to the company’s licensees rose as supply chain issues improved.
The Cambridge company expects higher sales volumes in the second half of this year, again supported by new product launches. However, the company expects profitability to increase mainly in the first half of the year.
Raspberry Pi has just launched a machine learning hardware product: the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, in partnership with technology company Hailo and cloud connectivity product Raspberry Pi Connect.
The AI Kit came to market about a week before Raspberry Pi’s successful IPO, which raised £178.9 million for the company.
The company told investors it would spend the money on supply chain improvements, engineering projects and “other general corporate purposes.”
Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said the company’s IPO was “the turning point of the first half of the year.”
The listing of Raspberry Pi is a rare victory for the London market, which has struggled to attract new IPOs and has seen several companies being acquired by foreign companies in recent years.
In the first half of 2024, only eight new companies listed on the LSE, compared to 47 in the same period three years earlier.
Many companies choose to list in the US rather than the UK because they have access to much greater capital resources and can achieve higher valuations.
Since listing in June, Raspberry Pi has been added to the FTSE 250 Index and shares have risen by around a third to 369.8p.
Raspberry Pi Stocks rose 6.2 percent on Tuesday morning.
Mark Crouch, market analyst at investment platform eToro, said: ‘It’s no secret that the AI industry has a lot to offer. And with that comes a lot of competition looking to get a piece of the action.
‘But recent data suggests the AI market could grow tenfold by 2030, meaning more tech investors are eager to get a piece of the Raspberry Pi pie.’
Raspberry Pi was launched in 2009 and is the best-selling British computer ever, and is especially popular with hobbyists and amateur programmers.
Over the past decade, the company has sold more than 60 million single-board computers in over 70 countries.
Their products are often used in edge computing, where data is collected, processed and analyzed near where it is generated, rather than in a central data center.
Analysts at broker Peel Hunt said: ‘Recent sentiment does not distract us from our view that edge computing will do to the Raspberry Pi what the desktop did to Microsoft, the smartphone to Apple and the data centre to NVIDIA.’
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