AR Company Glimpse Group Goes Public Shortly After Setting Price Terms

After Chinese social media virtual reality platform Soulgate postponed its U.S. public offering, another company has swooped in to take its spot. The Glimpse Group (VRAR) has priced its IPO and brought augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) to the exchange.

What's Glimpse's IPO price, and what makes this AR and VR company unique in its growing market?

Led by president and CEO Lyron Bentovim, Glimpse focuses on innovative AR/VR through eight subsidiaries. The offers are sweeping: tech that supports education, remote work, interactive therapy, video workflow, food and retail businesses, and more. While Glimpse isn't a gamified company, it's not against a bit of fun.

Additionally, it stays away from the direct-to-consumer space, focusing instead on business-to-business (and business-to-business-to-consumer). This differentiates the brand from competitors such as Alphabet (GOOGL) and Virtuix (a privately held company).

With the help of bookrunner EF Hutton, Glimpse priced its IPO at $12.3 million. This is allocated among 1.8 million shares at $7 per share, a number that's right in the middle of the initially proposed $6–$8 range.  

The group offered its underwriter a 45-day window to purchase an extra 262,500 shares at the IPO starting price (minus discounts and commissions available to these companies). The $12.3 million total assumed that the company would take Glimpse up on the offer once the ticker symbol went live. That assumption was correct, considering Glimpse's float fell to nothing pretty much immediately.

Glimpse listed on the Nasdaq under the symbol "VRAR", which cleverly encapsulates its virtual and augmented reality offerings. As the stock is officially public, retail investors can find the ticker on their preferred brokerage account or trading platform.

Glimpse's common shares became available to the general public around 11:00 a.m. Jul. 1. Institutional investors swooped in early and brought its starting price of $7 per share up to $16.37. As of this article's writing, VRAR stock had experienced some volatility since passing $16, falling 20.1 percent from the peak. However, shares were still trading at around $12.90 each, a solid 82.1 percent boost from the official debut.

IPOs are known for their volatility. Whereas some investors find the risk in this type of value investing is worth the reward, others view IPOs as overpriced. The reality is likely much more nuanced and depends entirely on the company at hand. 

All things considered, Glimpse is sitting on a market value of approximately $84 million. This is a much smaller IPO than many that have occurred over the last year and could provide an opportunity in the micro- or small-cap space, depending on how quickly Glimpse can grow its operations.