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Opera Browser Raises $115 Million In Its Stock Market Debut (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Opera, an underdog in a browser market dominated by Google's Chrome, raised $115 million in an initial public offering Friday. The company sold 9.6 million American depositary shares at $12 each, the high end of the $10-to-$12 range it expected for the IPO. When the stock started trading more broadly at about 7:30 a.m. PT, it rose as high as 28 percent above that before settling in at a 10 percent rise, to $13.24, during midday trading.... In fact, Opera raised a big notch more, because at the same time as the IPO, it also secured a $60 million private funding round from Tospring Technology, also known as Bitmain, which makes Bitcoin mining computers, IDG Capital Fund and IDG Capital Investors. And the financial firms underwriting the IPO had an option to release another 15 percent of shares -- 1.44 million. "It gets us roughly up to $190 million," Chief Financial Officer Frode Jacobsen said....
In the first three months of 2018, Opera reported net income of $6.6 million on revenue of $39.4 million. The company makes money through partnerships with search engines, including Google and Yandex, that pay for search traffic it sends their way and through advertising deals like promoting websites on the browser's bookmarking, or speed dial, page. Opera has 264 million monthly active users on smartphones and 57 million on personal computers, Opera said in regulatory filings. Starting in 2017, it built an AI-powered news service into its browser and now offers it as a standalone app called Opera News. That has 90 million monthly users. The news app and service has been responsible for the turnaround in Opera's recent financial fortunes, Jacobsen said.
In the first three months of 2018, Opera reported net income of $6.6 million on revenue of $39.4 million. The company makes money through partnerships with search engines, including Google and Yandex, that pay for search traffic it sends their way and through advertising deals like promoting websites on the browser's bookmarking, or speed dial, page. Opera has 264 million monthly active users on smartphones and 57 million on personal computers, Opera said in regulatory filings. Starting in 2017, it built an AI-powered news service into its browser and now offers it as a standalone app called Opera News. That has 90 million monthly users. The news app and service has been responsible for the turnaround in Opera's recent financial fortunes, Jacobsen said.
opera is not a norweigan company anymore. they may still have an office there, but opera software and the browser is 95% chinese-owned. their owners have a shady reputation, at best... and that's on top of their government also having a piece of the action.
Very very similar. Opera is Chrome with a different spin on it. Well, sort of. It all depends on just how dependent chromium is on Google's support. My perception is that chromium's long term existence is completely and utterly dependent on Google's support.
In some ways chromium browsers are the best of both worlds: Google does all the difficult security and infrastructure stuff, including supporting the extension store. Then you strip out all the asshole and have a great browser. It's a great reason to use Vivaldi.
On the other hand, to basing a publicly traded business model off of chromium feels like the act of a wretched scavenger. Can't say I respect it much. Live by Google, die by Google. Sooner rather than later. As stated previously, my attitude depends on how dependent I think chromium is on Google.
We need a fourth browser engine outside of webkit/blink, gecko and edge. Use your money to put Presto back into prime time and reduce dependence on Google.
...it's sure to be only a matter of time before the product goes down the drain...
Really? You had the golden opportunity here for an opera pun, and you didn't take it.
Opera used to be a Norwegian company with Norwegian developers and an active responsive community.
Within the last 5 years, Opera ASA fired all of their Norwegian developers, outsourced to the Czech Republic and sold to a Chinese Consortium.
There is little to no reason to continue supporting a closed source non-European "chromium."
If closed source isn't an issue, then you might as well be using Opera's spiritual successor, Vivaldi -- created by the original founder of Opera (Jon von Tetzchner), whom also hired many of the fired Norwegian Opera dev's.