Oura Pulls $15bn Nasdaq Listing Days After Filing

Oura has scrapped its plan to list on the US stock market just days after announcing it, shelving a flotation that would have valued the smart ring maker at $15bn (£11.3bn).

The company said it would postpone the listing "due to uncertainty in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market" and gave no timetable for a revived attempt. The decision came little more than a week after Oura filed official documents to raise up to $2.2bn by selling shares to investors.

Oura had planned to price shares between $40 and $44 on the Nasdaq, implying a $15bn market value. Chief executive Tom Hale signalled the delay is tactical rather than a retreat. "An IPO is just one step in our journey," he said, adding that "we have the luxury of choosing our moment".

The postponement makes Oura the latest company to pull a public listing as experts describe a deteriorating IPO market. Earlier this month, US nuclear technology firm Holtec International also postponed its flotation, blaming an "unusual confluence of developments that has impaired investor confidence in the market for new public offerings".

Holtec pointed to rising energy costs, military conflicts, global trade tensions and inflation concerns that have pushed central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, to raise benchmark interest rates. This week, the yield on US debt repayable in 10 years' time reached its highest level since 2007.

Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket, put the shift bluntly: "What is now clear is we are in a very different IPO market to the one we envisaged just a few weeks ago."

Oura's fundamentals underscore why it can afford to wait. In its last full financial year, ending 30 September 2025, the company made a pre-tax profit of $23.5m on sales of $907.8m, up from a $6.2m pre-tax profit the previous year. Its most recent figures, for the nine months to 30 June this year, show pre-tax income of $70m on sales of $1.2bn.

Founded in Finland in 2013 and now headquartered in San Francisco, Oura makes smart rings costing upwards of $300 that monitor the wearer's heartbeat and sleep patterns, with the data analysed and presented in an app.

The company faces a class action lawsuit filed by the Clarkson Law Firm in August, accusing it of false advertising over claims that its rings can accurately track a person's sleep activity and patterns. The suit claimed: "Oura rings cannot measure one's sleep or cycles. That's because sleep happens in the brain, not on one's finger." It is understood that Oura's decision to delay the IPO is not connected to the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Oura defended the product in a statement: "We stand behind our science, research and accuracy claims." They added: "Like other consumer sleep wearables, Oura Ring estimates sleep stages using multiple physiological signals, including heart rate, heart rate variability, movement, breathing patterns, and temperature."

With profitable operations, more than $2bn in trailing run-rate sales and no forced timeline, Oura can wait out the volatility that has already claimed Holtec's listing — the question for the broader market is how many other issuers follow the same path.