Oura’s IPO Filing Shows the Ring Is the Hook. The Subscription Is the Business.

Oura, maker of the smart ring that has quietly become the default health tracker for people who dislike smartwatches, has filed to go public, and the filing is more interesting than the hardware. Revenue reached $1.21 billion for the nine months to June, up 74% on the same period a year earlier, and the company swung to a profit of $60.8 million. Rings still account for about 80% of sales. The shares are expected to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker OURA as soon as this month.

The economics sit in the other 20%. Oura’s memberships carry an 89% gross margin, against the far thinner margin on manufacturing and shipping a titanium ring, and the company reports 5 million paying members who open the app more than three and a half times a day. That combination is what investors pay up for: a one-off piece of hardware that recruits a customer, followed by a recurring fee with almost no marginal cost attached, supported by a daily habit that makes cancelling feel like a loss. It is the same structure that turned Apple’s services line into the part of that business analysts value most highly.

The caution is Oura’s own. The company warns in its filing that growth will slow, which is the expected pattern once the early adopters in a category have bought. Hardware-led subscription businesses also carry a specific risk that pure software does not: if a competitor undercuts the device, or a phone maker builds comparable sensing into a product customers already own, the recruiting mechanism weakens even though the margins on existing members stay attractive. A 74% growth rate is a demanding number to be measured against next year.

For anyone watching the listing, the figure that matters is not the revenue line but the split between hardware and membership revenue, and whether membership keeps growing faster than ring sales. If it does, the market will eventually value Oura on its subscription base rather than its device volumes. The first two quarterly reports after the IPO will show which way that ratio is moving, and at what cost in marketing spend.