Beleaguered GoPro has a new investor, and he really believes in the company’s mission. YouTube star and successful new filmmaker Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier, has acquired an 8.5 percent stake in the struggling camera maker.
GoPro’s financial woes have been very well documented. The company has laid people off, searched for buyers, and its CEO and founder, Nick Woodman, has even loaned the company money through stock purchases.
Bloomberg reports that Fischbach’s 8.5 percent stake in GoPro makes him the company’s largest single shareholder. At GoPro’s current valuation, Markiplier likely spent around $9.3 million on his new GoPro shares.
Markiplier says he loves using GoPro cameras and believes the company is arguably undervalued right now. GoPro is currently valued at $110 million, a far cry from its roughly $13 billion value 12 years ago.
“I saw the stock and where it was, I was like that seems undervalued.” Fischbach said in an interview. “It’s just something I’ve been cooking in the background; I want the company to succeed.”
While Fischbach isn’t strictly an activist shareholder, he is committed to making filmmaking more accessible. As Bloomberg notes, the creator has also invested in Strada, a company that makes tools for filmmakers to share large files.
After making YouTube videos for many years and amassing tens of millions of subscribers, Fischbach made the jump to Hollywood earlier this year with his hit horror film, Iron Lung. The movie made over $50 million at the box office, a huge profit over its $3 million budget. Fischbach distributed the movie himself, which is incredibly unusual.
Markiplier created a lot of behind-the-scenes footage from making the movie, much of which was shot using GoPro cameras. He says he was immediately excited about the company’s Mission 1 Pro ILS camera, which is effectively a very tiny cinema camera, albeit one with limitations.
Markiplier tried to get a sneak peek at the camera at NAB in April but was turned away. He says he kept chasing down GoPro to learn more and was eventually invited to GoPro’s California offices.
“It blows my mind what it can do in such a small package,” Fischbach said of the GoPro Mission 1 Pro ILS. “They have a big future with this camera coming out opening up a new segment for them.”
Fischbach clearly believes in GoPro’s mission and thinks that the company could recover. The company’s stock price is down nearly 57 percent year to date and 93.6 percent in the past five years. GoPro has also been trading below $1 per share for a while now, which runs afoul of NASDAQ requirements.
Image creditsHeader photo by Gage Skidmore. Licensed via CC BY-SA 2.0.
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