Following a steep downfall in stock and revenue in the past year, GoPro, the maker of action adventure cameras, announced a deal Monday to acquire two mobile video editing apps – Replay and Splice – to make video editing easier for its users. In an interview with Forbes, the company's founder said the deal is valued at $105 million in cash and stock for both the companies.
GoPro posted its quarterly results earlier last month, where its sales and revenues fell below analysts' expectations. In the past 12 months, the company's stock dropped more than 80 percent. Citing the plunge in stocks, GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said the company needed to address one of the biggest pain points of its users – video editing.
"Splice, Replay and GoPro will combine to deliver what we believe will be the fastest and most enjoyable mobile editing experience," Woodman said in a statement. "We believe the accessibility, speed and efficiency of mobile will make it the predominant editing platform of the future."
Replay and Splice are video editing apps that make it easier for users to edit and publish clips while on-the-go. Paris-based Stupeflix designed Replace allows users to select videos and photos and combine them into a single video by adding transitions, effects and music. Splice, on the other hand, is developed by Austin, Texas-based Vemory, which serves as a manual video editing tool.
GoPro, the San Mateo, California-based company, plans to integrate both the apps into the GoPro experience in the future, Woodman said, according to Forbes. Woodman also said that his company had been developing similar apps internally, however, required more developers, which now come from Splice and Replay.
"We had been building this in house... but we realized [we had] a shared vision of the future," he said. "The next logical question is, whether than reinvent the wheel, should we all get together and build a car? A car can take us many more places than a wheel can."
The company did not disclose if the employees behind the acquired apps will join GoPro, but the ailing holiday sales led to job layoffs. Last month, GoPro said it would cut 7 percent of its entire workforce, which translates to more than 100 people.
In joint efforts to reverse the setbacks, GoPro announced a patent licensing deal last month with Microsoft to use the company's file storage and other technologies.
