Oura's ring business did $1.4 billion of revenue on a trailing-twelve-month basis and is already GAAP profitable, and it just filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker O-U-R-A.
Most consumer hardware companies either lose money scaling or die once a gadget stops getting re-bought. Oura's S-1 makes the case that it recovers what it spent acquiring a customer before that customer ever pays for a subscription.
"The TLDR is Oura sells you a ring that pays back the cost of acquiring you upfront, then charges you a subscription for as long as you keep wearing it."
CJ Gustafson is the founder of the Mostly Metrics newsletter and host of Run the Numbers, and he said he read all 362 pages of the S-1 before recording this breakdown.
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 34 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 numbers that matter.
👤 Speaker: CJ Gustafson, founder of the Mostly Metrics newsletter and host of Run the Numbers
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on YouTube (Run the Numbers)
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Show notes | ⏱️ 34 min | ✅ Time saved: 24 min
Key Takeaways
Oura's hardware pays back its own customer-acquisition cost on day one, before the subscription even starts
Gross profit per ring is about $143 on $311 of average revenue per ring
A battery warranty problem dragged gross margin down from 65% to 55% over two years
The hardware side still backs into roughly 46% margin, ahead of Apple's ~37% on hardware
Oura reports a $924 million net loss to common shareholders that has nothing to do with its operations
It comes from buying back preferred stock above its accounting carrying value, which GAAP treats as a "deemed dividend"
In February, Oura tendered for its own stock at up to 52 times its Series B price — months before filing to go public
It also raised more than $1 billion of new preferred capital in the same stretch
72% of Oura's members are women, and their compounded growth has outpaced men's, 143% to 94%, since fiscal 2024
Samsung has asked US customs regulators to block Oura ring imports, and Oura owns no factory of its own
At a $16 billion valuation on $1.42 billion of trailing revenue, Oura would price at roughly 11.3x sales
Whoop's last private round valued it at $10.1 billion; Garmin trades around 7x revenue with a 26% operating margin
1. The Growth Numbers
Oura sold 3.6 million rings on a trailing-twelve-month basis, about 2% of the 212 million wearables shipped worldwide, according to IDC data cited in the S-1. Total paid membership reached 5 million, up 100% year on year, and members have grown at triple digits for seven straight quarters. Ninety-four percent of ring sales convert into a paid subscription.
"So, key stats here: revenue, $1.4 billion on a trailing-12-month basis. That is 74% year-on-year growth compared to the prior period."
"Fiscal year 2025 they did $908 million of revenue off of $407 million the prior year — that's up 123%."
Hardware is 80% of revenue and subscription 20%, a mix that has shifted from 83:17 a year earlier — hardware revenue is growing 65% year on year, subscription revenue 121%
Revenue per ring has actually fallen, to $311 from $326 in fiscal 2025 and $332 in fiscal 2024, even as list prices rose — Ring 5 launched at $399, up from Ring 4's $349 — because Oura's mix is shifting toward retail partners like Costco and Amazon, who take a cut
2. The Battery Margin Hit
Gross margin came in at 55%, up from 51% a year earlier but down sharply from 65% in fiscal 2024. Gustafson said a battery-related warranty expense is what drove the two-year decline.
"And 46% gross margin on physical objects is actually strong; Apple runs around 37% on hardware." Gustafson backed into that figure from the filing: memberships generated $241 million of revenue at 89% margin, or $214 million of the company's $662 million total gross profit, leaving $448 million on $974 million of hardware revenue
At $311 of revenue per ring, that works out to about $143 of gross profit per unit — which is why Oura says it recovers its customer-acquisition cost on the very first sale
Operating income has grown every year — $13 million in fiscal 2024, $45 million in fiscal 2025, and $71 million (a 6% margin) in the first nine months of fiscal 2026 — and net income for that nine-month period was $61 million
Adjusted EBITDA margin actually fell, from 12% to 9%, even as the dollar figure grew from $84 million to $107 million — a sign the incremental revenue isn't yet dropping straight to the bottom line
3. The $924M Accounting Loss
Despite being profitable, Oura's S-1 reports a net loss attributable to common shareholders of negative $924 million, and a loss per share of $89.53 — a number Gustafson flagged as pure accounting noise rather than a reflection of the business.
Oura spent nearly $1.2 billion buying back stock from existing holders in the first nine months of the year, mostly preferred stock held by institutional investors, at prices above the shares' accounting carrying value
"$985 million gets treated as a deemed dividend when calculating the earnings available to common shareholders — this is purely accounting treatment and not a reflection of their operations."
4. Who Buys a $349 Ring
About a third of new members say Oura is their first wearable, and another 29% say it replaced one they already owned — evidence, Gustafson said, that growth is not only coming from people who already wore a Garmin, Fitbit or Apple Watch.
72% of members are women, and female membership has compounded at roughly 143% since fiscal 2024, versus 94% for men — cycle tracking, conception, pregnancy and menopause give Oura use cases that can follow a customer for decades
37% of members report household income under $100,000; the age split runs 31% at 29 or younger, 42% between 30 and 45, and 27% at 46-plus; 15% work in healthcare, and more than half report at least one chronic condition
He said he had expected Oura's customer base to look like a Bay Area status symbol — "look at what I'm wearing, I'm so healthy" — but found something much broader
5. The Retail Pivot
Around 40% of new members are acquired organically through word of mouth, but Gustafson said Oura is still spending aggressively to build a mainstream consumer brand — roughly 21 cents of every revenue dollar goes to sales and marketing, and that spend rose 87% between 2024 and 2025, from $108 million to $202 million.
Retail now accounts for about half of hardware revenue across roughly 8,400 doors — Amazon, Best Buy, Costco and Target among the major partners — after Oura added 39 retail partners in fiscal 2025 and 70 more in the first three quarters of fiscal 2026
The company also reaches buyers through HSA and FSA pre-tax dollars, an Amex platinum-card benefit worth up to $200 a year toward a ring, and an enterprise channel that sells to employers, insurers and government agencies, with Cigna cited as an example of an employer wellness benefit
Oura calls its addressable market $90 billion by combining fitness trackers, wellness coaching, digital care management, digital therapeutics and connected biosensors — a framing meant to distance it from being valued as a fitness tracker
Oura repeatedly frames itself around prevention rather than fitness — the filing uses "preventative" 18 times and "proactive" 24 times, by Gustafson's count
6. Five Red Flags
Samsung has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission alleging Oura infringes its patents, and is seeking to block Oura ring imports — a real threat because Oura assembles nothing itself; contract manufacturers build every ring, and each one has to clear customs. Gustafson summarized Oura's public counter as: "we have over 1,140 patents, cut the shit."
A class action filed in August 2026 alleges Oura falsely advertised the accuracy of its sleep tracking — notable because 87% of members told the company accuracy was a reason they bought
Oura's former chief executive, Harpreet Singh Rai, is suing the company over a September 2024 agreement in which Oura repurchased his equity shortly before its private valuation moved materially higher; Peter Attia has also sued, saying he was promised stock he never received
Two customers account for 22% of revenue combined, and five customers make up 82% of accounts receivable — which had grown to $157 million, from $80 million nine months earlier, with about $129 million concentrated among those five
Oura has no internal manufacturing and relies on single-source suppliers for semiconductors, sensors, batteries, circuit boards and titanium, with tariff exposure across Estonia, Finland, Mexico, South Korea, China and the Netherlands
7. The Buyback Before the IPO
In fiscal 2025, Oura spent $308 million buying back common and preferred stock from existing shareholders. The pace then accelerated sharply: in February 2026 alone it ran a $534 million tender offer at $40 a share, followed by another $437 million of repurchases at prices as high as $56.
Forerunner Ventures led Oura's Series B at a weighted average price of about $0.77 a share — so the February tender was roughly 52 times that price. "I was like, why the hell would the shareholder sell if an IPO was imminent?" Gustafson said, before noting Oura raised more than $1 billion of new preferred capital in fiscal 2025 while simultaneously cashing out existing holders — a private liquidity event staged right before the public one
The IPO also triggers vesting on 18.8 million performance stock units. Because GAAP would not let Oura treat the IPO as probable before it happened, the company has not yet recognized most of the associated expense — $169 million of stock-compensation expense was sitting unrecognized as of last September, and Oura plans to withhold shares and use cash from the offering to cover the resulting tax bill
8. What It's Worth
At a reported $16 billion valuation on $1.42 billion of trailing revenue, Oura would price at roughly 11.3 times sales — a step up from the roughly $11 billion mark of its last funding round.
Whoop is the closest business-model comparison — hardware paired with a required subscription — though it skews more toward fitness; its most recent private financing valued it at $10.1 billion. Garmin is the comp if investors decide Oura is mostly a hardware company: it trades around 7 times revenue but carries a 26% operating margin and decades of history
"Their hardware-plus-subscription model looked fantastic until hardware demand stopped growing." Gustafson invoked Peloton as the cautionary tale nobody at Oura will mention on the roadshow
"If Oura gets valued like premium consumer hardware, 11x revenue looks rich; if investors buy the argument that the ring is really just the acquisition channel for a high-margin, highly retentive health platform, you can start to understand how they get there."
Bonus Insights
Oura re-domiciled from Finland to the US this year and now runs a September 30 fiscal year-end; its engineering base stays in Helsinki and Oulu
The chief executive isn't the founder — he joined in 2022 from SurveyMonkey, having also worked at Adobe — and the chief financial officer came from Headspace
Oura issued a $50 million SAFE to an unnamed investor in June 2026, shortly before filing, which Gustafson guessed was some kind of strategic partner
Its old debt carried a 9.5% stated rate (roughly 12% effective, plus an 8% back-end fee); Oura refinanced it away in 2025
Operating cash flow reached $328 million in the first nine months of 2026, more than double the year before, though Gustafson noted a large share came from working-capital swings rather than the core business
The cap table is clean — one class of common stock, one vote per share, no dual-class structure and no sponsor holding a majority stake — and the 5%-plus holders are Fidelity, Forerunner Ventures, Bedrock Ridge and Lifeline Ventures
Gustafson's bottom line is that Oura is an unusually good consumer hardware business because the ring pays back its own acquisition cost before the subscription even begins — but that strength is now running into a battery-driven margin hit, a retail channel that is starting to dictate pricing, and a stack of litigation the company will have to manage in public.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Oura (The health-wearable company at the center of the breakdown, filing to go public on the Nasdaq under ticker OURA)
Apple (Benchmark for hardware gross margin — Oura's ~46% against Apple's ~37% on hardware)
Samsung (Filed an ITC complaint alleging patent infringement and seeking to block Oura ring imports)
Costco, Amazon, Best Buy and Target (Oura's major retail partners, now roughly half of hardware revenue across about 8,400 doors)
Whoop (The closest business-model comp — hardware plus a required subscription — last privately valued at $10.1 billion)
Garmin (The comp if Oura gets valued as a pure hardware company — trades around 7x revenue with a 26% operating margin)
Peloton (Gustafson's cautionary tale for hardware-plus-subscription models once hardware demand stops growing)
Cigna (Cited as an example of an employer offering Oura as a wellness benefit)
American Express (Gives Platinum cardholders up to $200 a year in statement credits toward a ring)
Fidelity, Forerunner Ventures and Lifeline Ventures (Oura's disclosed 5%-plus shareholders; Forerunner led its Series B)
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Allen & Company and Jefferies (Lead underwriters on the IPO, part of an 18-bank syndicate)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Oura Inc. Form S-1 (The IPO registration statement Gustafson said he read cover to cover before recording this episode)
Oura Ring IPO: S1 Breakdown (Gustafson's companion write-up on Mostly Metrics, covering the same filing)
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