Looks like Raspberry PI is planning a UK/LSE IPO 
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Well i pit my money in apple pi and rhubarb crumblesš
Iād be interested in throwing in a few quid, maybe one for the heart rather than the mind.
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As someone who has little idea of how to invest in pre-IPO, how would an individual investor be able to buy shares? Or is it a matter of waiting for the IPO and buying on day 1 when the markets open?
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From my point of view, yeah, itād be wait for the IPO to take place and trade as usual, hopefully on Freetrade.
Some interesting things I found skimming the prospectus so far.
We rely to a significant degree on independent, open-source software programmers to develop and enhance our enterprise technologies. For example, the open-source community develops the Linux kernel, on which the majority of our SBC products rely. If these communities fail to adequately develop and enhance our opensource software, we will have to rely on other parties to develop and enhance our offerings or we would need to develop and enhance our offerings with our own resources
Considering they view this as their key strength this is a serious danger to profitability.
We intend to seek to further grow these markets, and to focus on China (where sales decreased from 1.6 million SBCs and compute modules in 2021 to 0.8 million in 2022, before growing to 1.1 million in 2023)
Low-cost SBCs shouldnāt really be affected by trade restrictions, and the company agrees. But it seems the US bans rolled out from 2022 coincided with a huge hit to China sales. Company doesnāt say why and correlation ā causation but doesnāt exactly justify their focus on it. They donāt seem to be a beneficiary of trade tensions thatās for sure.
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regarding your first quote: all tech companies rely on open source software to a degree. for example raspberry pi comes with itās own OS, which is actually a fork of Debian greatly improved for the RPi platform. Debian is in turn a Linux distro that is in use and supported by all of the big name tech coās.
regarding your second quote, i found this:
Although export licences are not currently required for our business, and none of our products are currently subject to recent US, EU and UK legislation requiring licenses for their export to China, export regulations are subject to changes that could affect our ability to ship products to certain countries and markets, including China.
in my own opinion things started looking up again in 2023. the slump was likely due to supply chain issues, tough economic times etc. looking at the numbers theyāre bouncing back.
in further news:
Arm to act as cornerstone investor for Raspberry Pi as it confirms intention to float.
As part of the deal, chip designer Arm and Lansdowne Partners will buy $35m (Ā£27.5m) worth of shares and up to $20m (Ā£15.7m) worth of shares, respectively.
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Applications open for the IPO over at HL https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/ipos-and-new-issues/raspberry-pi-holdings?utm_campaign=EOK42-Raspberry_Pi_IPO_Books_open
Shares looked to be priced at between 2.50-2.80GBP
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Something else buried in the auditorās intangible impairment testing:
A budgeted gross margin of 10 per cent. for Single Board Computers (āSBCsā), 30 per cent for accessories and 20 per cent for microcontroller products has been used. The budgeted gross margin is based on past performance for similar products and managementās expectations for the future.
This is all very conservative obviously, but Iām surprised both how low SBC and high microcontroller margins could get in future.
I would like to buy some of these shares on the IPO, but I donāt have an account with any of the 4 intermediaries (Interactive Investor, Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell and Canaccord Genuity).
Any suggestion which one would be the best to buy a handful of shares in a GIA or SIPP and maybe move them eventually to FT? Doing a bit of research it looks like AJ Bell might be cheapest option, but would like to confirm this. - Thank you!
you mention HL. wonāt this stock be available on Day 1 on freetrade?
Investors can buy the IPO using one of the intermediaries (https://investors.raspberrypi.com/intermediaries-offering). HL is one of the them.
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Any idea why this isnāt available on platforms like FT?
@acamp Hey Alex, is this being added to the platform?
Hey all
When the stock listed yesterday it only opened for conditional dealing. Only investors who subscribed to the IPO are able to trade during this window. The company is being admitted for unconditional dealing at the market open on 14 June and weāll have it live then!
Alex
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Since 72% of RPiās sales came from the industrial and embedded market, I was looking for more information on whatās really driving this. Some notable examples of OEM customers from the registration document:
Motorola, who market the compute-module-based HALO smart sensor, following their acquisition of our customer IPVideo
Schindler, whose next-generation elevator platform uses a Raspberry Pi compute module to drive the in-car touchscreen display
Sharp/NEC, one of our earliest scaled OEM customers, who support a variety of compute modules as embedded compute options for their digital signage platforms.
The direct-to-OEM channel accounted for 12 per cent. of SBC and compute module unit sales in 2023.
The high performance, low cost, and physical robustness of Raspberry Pi products make them suitable for a wide range of embedded applications, including, among others, electric vehicle charging, elevators, escalators and moving walkways, industrial control and automation, sports performance tracking, digital signage, smart buildings, thin clients, and energy management.
You can see case studies on their website: https://www.raspberrypi.com/success-stories/. A lot of scientific research, digital signage, agriculture, testing and process control.
Another interesting thing is that the float is going to be quite limited. Ownership is very concentrated among just a few strategic shareholders, including Sony, ARM, and two charities (RPi foundation and Ezrah Charitable Trust). ARM are increasing their stake. With the IPO upsized at the top of the range, the cap table should look something like this:
| Name | Stake |
|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi Foundation | 49% |
| Public Float | 23% |
| Employees | 9% |
| ARM | 7% |
| Lansdowne Partners | 6% |
| Ezrah Charitable Trust | 2% |
| Sony | 1% |
| Eben Upton | 1% |
ARM, Lansdowne, Sony and Ezrah all purchased at a $545m valuation. The RPi foundation has also stated it will remain a significant shareholder.
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