{"id":31559,"date":"2015-12-10T11:03:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T10:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=31559"},"modified":"2015-12-10T11:03:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T10:03:52","slug":"valued-at-e660-million-can-parrot-compete-with-dji-for-the-drone-throne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2015\/12\/valued-at-e660-million-can-parrot-compete-with-dji-for-the-drone-throne\/","title":{"rendered":"Valued at \u20ac660 Million, can Parrot compete with DJI for the Drone throne?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nLast\u00a0month Parrot announced that they would seek to raise \u20ac300 Million, including \u20ac90 Million contributed from CEO & founder Henri Seydoux himself & another \u20ac30 Million from BPIFrance.\u00a0Since October,\u00a0Parrot’s stock (listed on the Paris-based Euronext) has dropped from a high of just over 45\u20ac to a low point of 20\u20ac – the market cap at the time of publishing is around \u20ac750 Million, still higher than the \u20ac660 Million valuation that the new fundraising round would suggest.
\nParrot\u00a0is pulling in\u00a0increasingly large percentages of its revenue from its Drone sales, which has steadily surpasses its historical activity of selling infotainment systems for cars; however, next to China’ DJI, which recently raised $75 Million at a $10 Billion valuation<\/a>, it’s\u00a0difficult to see how\u00a0one can compete with the other.
\nSeydoux is often credited with having seen consumer drone interest coming well in advance – Parrot was arguably the first manufacturer to hit it big among drone enthusiasts – however, today’s fight against increasing competitors (and notably DJI), pits not only a\u00a0publicly listed company against a\u00a0venture-backed private one (whose valuation is determined by a handful of investors who have an interest in the company being seen as an unstoppable train), but pits Venture Capital against a family-owned business.
\nAlthough the roles are reversed,\u00a0I’d liken the ensuing battle to that of Mattel & LEGO, a publicly listed vs. a family-owned business (respectively), who have competed\u00a0for the #1 spot among children for the past 30 years.\u00a0Each has seen their days in the lead and their days in trouble, including notably in the early 2000s when the\u00a0LEGO founder’s grandson\u00a0Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen injected 800 Million kroner into LEGO in order to bail it out (something that’s quite difficult when you don’t have a\u00a0single majority shareholder with a family legacy, like Seydoux with Parrot).
\nThe consumer Drone interest has evolved into Drone sports & enterprise applications (delivery, surveillance, entertainment\/recording), meaning that the market appetite for Drone’s is only going to grow. In their Q3 earnings announcement last month, Parrot showed that revenues were up 33% over last year,\u00a0tracking \u20ac324 Million in full-year revenues (source: Reuters<\/a>). Parrot needs money in order to move as fast as DJI, who is raising new rounds from strategic investors every quarter, making strategic investments in order to boost its portfolio, and\u00a0is pushing aggressively into new markets – exactly what Seydoux &\u00a0Parrot should be doing as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last\u00a0month Parrot announced that they would seek to raise \u20ac300 Million, including \u20ac90 Million contributed from CEO & founder Henri Seydoux himself & another \u20ac30 Million from BPIFrance.\u00a0Since October,\u00a0Parrot’s stock (listed on the Paris-based Euronext) has dropped from a high of just over 45\u20ac to a low point of 20\u20ac – the market cap at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":31684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}