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GoPro lost $373 million during its awful 2016

GoPro lost $373 million during its awful 2016

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But a new Hero 6 lineup is coming this year

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GoPro’s awful 2016 can finally be put in terms of dollars. The company just released its fourth quarter earnings, and it turns out the camera-maker operated at a loss of $373 million for the year. While the company did pull in $540 million in revenue in the fourth quarter — the second-best ever for GoPro, and about $100 million more than its awful 2015 holiday season — that figure was still about $30 million below industry projections.

Multiple rounds of layoffs, the closing of departments, and a $102 million charge for valuation allowance on deferred tax assets helped fuel the company’s big loss. GoPro’s stock dropped about 15 percent in after hours trading following the release.

GoPro warned investors early last year that 2016 would be rough, financially. But GoPro wasn’t even able to meet its own grim revenue estimates — today’s announcement shows that GoPro tallied $1.185 billion in revenue in 2016, which is almost $200 million below the company’s projections from last February, and a sizable drop from its $1.6 billion total in 2015.

The wretched financials would have been even worse if not for GoPro’s new Hero 5 Black and Hero 5 Session. Announced in September and released in October, the new flagship cameras were the number one and two best-selling digital cameras in the US, according to an NPD report cited by GoPro. CEO Nick Woodman said on a call with investors that the company sold through 2 million cameras in the fourth quarter, and he added that a Hero 6 lineup of cameras is coming in 2017.

Mostly missing from the earnings report is Karma, GoPro’s ill-fated drone that was recalled after some of the 2,500 units sold started falling out of the sky. GoPro relaunched the Karma drone lineup yesterday after taking three months to redesign the faulty battery latch that caused the failures in the first place.