GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO) rose to the highest in more than four month as the maker of iconic head-mounted cameras and aspiring media company announced plans to move beyond its Hero brand of wearable cameras, getting into virtual reality and drones.
Shares of the San Mateo, California-based company jumped 7 percent to $56.97 at 2:37 p.m. in New York, after touching $57.84, the highest intraday price since January 12.
Chief executive officer Nick Woodman announced a six-camera attachment that would enable users to shoot 360-degree videos that could then be pieced into virtual reality segments using technology from Kolor, the virtual reality production company GoPro bought at the end of April, and viewed using third-party virtual reality googles, like Facebook's Oculus or Microsoft's HoloLens.
GoPro’s Six-Camera Spherical Array for virtual reality will be available in the second half of this year, Woodman said yesterday at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
GoPro will also be making a "quadcopter" drone—a drone with four rotors—to come out the first half of next year. Woodman didn't say what it would cost.
Woodman said he planned to release the GoPro drone within the first half of 2016, and that it would be targeted at consumers.
"Quadcopters have a special place for us at GoPro because I was a huge radio-controlled plane enthusiast as a kid and I could never really get anyone involved in it with me because it was either too geeky or it took a lot of time to learn how to fly these things - you'd crash them all the time," he said.
"So, I was really surprised to see how quickly the general consumer was adopting quadcopters.
The world's bestselling commercial drone maker - China's DJI - has already decided to limit initial sales of its Phantom 3 flagship to a design that features its own proprietary video camera.
The previous generation had been launched instead with an optional mount for GoPro cams.
In the first quarter of 2015, GoPro shipped 1.3 million units -- up 58 percent from 852,000 a year earlier. The company posted revenue of $363.1 million, up 54 percent, and net income of $16.8 million, up 52 percent.
