GoPro (GPRO 1.44%) just reported another stellar quarter. And similar to investors' response to its impressive performance three months ago, the market has plenty of reasons to rejoice. After climbing 2% in Tuesday's regular session, GoPro stock jumped another 3.5% in after-hours trading after the company announced that second-quarter revenue rose 71.7% year over year, to $419.9 million. That translated to adjusted net income that more than quadrupled over the same period to $50.7 million, or $0.35 per diluted share.
Analysts, on average, were anticipating revenue of only $395.2 million, and earnings of $0.26 per share. To be fair, the results also trounced GoPro's own guidance, which called for second-quarter revenue between $380 million and $400 million, and earnings per share of $0.24 to $0.26.
"I couldn't be more proud of our aggressive pace of innovation," stated GoPro CEO Nicholas Woodman. "With the introduction of the HERO4 Session and HERO+ LCD, we've launched five new cameras in the past 10 months, exciting both new and existing customers and contributing to strong second quarter results." But perhaps most importantly, Woodman also succinctly elaborated, "Our core business is enjoying terrific momentum as we charge forward into attractive adjacent markets."
The highlight reel
Regarding its core business, GoPro shipped a whopping 1.647 million capture devices during the quarter, good for a 92.9% year-over-year increase. And while sales to the core North American market remained healthy after rising 39% year over year to $212.3 million, GoPro continued to enjoy even more impressive growth from its smaller EMEA and Asia-Pacific markets, where revenue rose 105% to $137.2 million, and 183% to $70.4 million, respectively. In total, international revenue represented more than half of all sales during the quarter, and China has notably become a top-10 revenue-generating country for GoPro in the process.
Once again, GoPro's higher-end HERO4 Black and Silver models were its best sellers during the quarter, together representing more than 50% of total units and revenue. GoPro didn't offer specific details on the early consumer response to last week's launch of its tiny $399 HERO4 Session camera, but management did hint during the subsequent conference call that GoPro's "family of three premium devices priced $399 and above" will continue to comprise over half of total revenue and units going forward.
GoPro also offered several updates on its media efforts. Its mobile app, for example, was downloaded another 2.5 million times during the quarter, bringing cumulative installations to over 18 million. Meanwhile, GoPro Studio installations again exceeded 1.7 million, more than doubling over the same year-ago period. And just yesterday, GoPro revealed its GoPro Licensing Portal to help professionals seamlessly search, sort, and request likeness rights and copyrights to a vast library of premium content.
Looking forward
In addition -- and again without providing much detail -- GoPro reminded investors of its official confirmation in May of a GoPro-branded quad-copter with a targeted commercial launch in the first half of 2016. Also during the call, Woodman mentioned his engineering team is "having a blast" testing and designing this "differentiated" product, perhaps hinting that GoPro might not be simply following in existing drone makers' footsteps.
In another adjacent market move, GoPro also unveiled new six- and 16-camera spherical arrays to capitalize on the market for virtual-realty content generation. As I suggested in my earnings preview earlier this week, virtual reality could represent a multibillion-dollar incremental market over the long term for GoPro.
Finally, management used the conference call to provide guidance. Driven by continued strength in EMEA and APAC, current-quarter revenue should be between $430 million and $445 million, the midpoint of which represents a 56% year-over-year increase. Third-quarter gross margin should be 46% and result in net earnings per share in the range of $0.29 to $0.32. By contrast, Wall Street was modeling third-quarter revenue and earnings of only $401.3 million and $0.22 per share, respectively.
Simply put, there's a lot to love about GoPro's latest quarter, and the company shows no signs of slowing down. So in the end, if GoPro can successfully seize any meaningful chunk of its adjacent verticals while keeping its core business strong, I see no reason the stock won't also be able to reward patient shareholders from here.
