One Year From Software Fiasco, Sonos Can Still Carry a Tune
Summary
When the maker of premium wireless speakers posted its fiscal second-quarter results on May 7, exactly one year had passed since a disastrous app upgrade. That work is falling to Tom Conrad, the longtime Sonos board member who stepped in as chief executive in January. That thinned out the layers, combining multiple hardware business units into one and centralizing the company’s software efforts. The company has called out strong sales of the Arc Ultra over the past two quarters, a $1,000 TV soundbar that came out last fall when Sonos was still dealing with the blowback from its app update. In a note to clients, Erik Woodring of Morgan Stanley said such moves could “lower the friction of onboarding new users, which could pay dividends if successful, as the average Sonos household had 3.08 products at the end of [fiscal year 2024].”