Raspberry Pi wows the market with blistering first half and reveals further innovation uptick
CEO Eben Upton and his team, who nailed a superbly successful IPO, says the business has defied forecasts that its figures would be second-half weighted.
He revealed that first half profitability to June 30 had beaten even the most optimistic board expectations. And he wowed shareholders by disclosing that there was more innovation to come, with new iterations brought out alongside even greater customer engagement.
Upton said: “The IPO was the watershed moment of the first half, with admission to trading just two weeks before the period end. In continued pleasing trading in the first half, we saw strong uptake of our latest flagship SBC, Raspberry Pi5, the launch of the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, and the successful ramp to production of RP2350, our second-generation microcontroller platform.
“The higher than usual customer and channel inventory levels which were evident at the time of the IPO have continued to unwind and there is a growing sense that this will have concluded by the year end.
“We have an extraordinary team, a world class product set backed up by an exciting future roadmap, and a loyal and engaged customer base that we can continue to grow.
“In the second half, we have further planned product releases and a number of initiatives to further expand our engagement within our Industrial and Embedded market.”
Since the $225 million IPO, Raspberry Pi has maintained pretty spectacular progress. First half profitability was stronger than expected with gross profit of $34.2m and Adjusted EBITDA of $20.9m up 55 per cent against a supply-constrained comparative H1 2023.
Volumes were marginally lower than expected, with sales skewed towards higher margin variants, yielding stronger unit economics.
The business reported a robust recovery from pandemic-related shortages, with almost all Single Board Computers (SBCs) and Compute Module products freely available in channel.
A major product transition was executed, with Raspberry Pi5 selling 1.1m units in H1 following introduction at the end of October.
The company also completed a successful launch of first-party AI hardware product (Raspberry Pi AI Kit), in collaboration with Hailo and introduced the debut of a cloud connectivity product (Raspberry Pi Connect) with 50k users since launch in May 2024.
Shareholders were also thrilled by a production ramp of its RP2350 microcontroller, supporting introduction of Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and partner hardware products in August.
During the period, Raspberry Pi was awarded the London Stock Exchange's Green Economy Mark based on the energy efficiency benefits of its computers.
Adding a large layer of icing to an already tasty cake, FTSE 250 index inclusion was confirmed as part of the September FTSE Quarterly review.
A statement from the company said that, having previously expected performance to be weighted towards the second half of the year, “this is no longer the case, with profitability in the first half ahead of internal expectations.”
Higher unit volumes anticipated for the second half, supported by new product launches, with an expected product mix contributing to lower unit economics.
Raspberry Pi continues to observe higher than usual customer and channel inventory levels, however we are seeing signs that this should normalise towards the end of the year.
Expectations for the full year remain unchanged.
