Gaming hardware company Corsair (Nasdaq:CRSR) is now Nasdaq listed, having raised $238 million by offering 14 million shares at $17, a month after filing for an Initial Public Offering. It’s an interesting time for gamers, with the pandemic seeing increased sales as more people spend additional time at home, while gaming itself is a growth area across most platforms, including the PC.
I caught up with Corsair’s director of worldwide PR, Harry Butler to get his take on Corsair’s listed status, its view of the gaming market and plans for growth.
Corsair is a market leader in several product categories including PC cases
Antony: Corsair was looking to go public a while ago – what changed to get over the finishing line this time?
Harry: Several things and firstly it was the involvement of venture capitalists a few years ago through our partners at EagleTree who saw the potential for Corsair to become a listed company, but the company has been working towards this for a long time through expansion of product lines and growing revenue. We became a $1billion revenue company for the first time last year so we’ve been growing steadily
Antony: Are there any product lines you’ll be focusing on given the new funds available?
Harry: We’ll be continuing to invest in all product lines to maintain our position. We have 21 product lines, we’re market leaders in areas such as PC cases, power supplies and keyboards and we’re top two or three in pretty much everything else including areas we’ve moved into in the last decade, including headsets, mice and streaming accessories. If you look at your desk and see something we don’t make, there’s a chance we’re thinking of making it.
Antony: How do you view the potential for growth for Corsair within the gaming market?
Harry: The mast majority of gamers don’t pay any money to game. They use low end devices or smartphones, but we’d like to introduce these gamers to the journey many PC enthusiasts have been on, which moving into console gaming and then PC gaming, and ultimately spending more on gaming peripherals and PC hardware. Helping customers enjoy their gaming and be part of that journey is important to us, but so is getting more of the 500 million PC gamers out there to invest in high quality hardware, which many are not currently doing. There’s huge potential there in converting both smartphone and console gamers into PC gamers, who will ultimately become fans of our company.
Corsair views the PC gaming market as extremely robust with enthusiasts willing to pay for high-end … [+]
Antony: The PC gaming market has had some bad press over the last decade but recently figures are looking far more positive. How do you view the health of the PC gaming industry at the moment?
Harry: The health of both PC and console gaming are extremely robust and we have products aimed at both markets. The latest consoles from Sony and Microsoft have sold out and so has Nvidia’s new graphics card, the RTX 3080, all within a week. I don’t know a better indicator of gaming health, including PC gaming health and it’s clear that people want to play games, and they want to do it on high-end hardware. PC gaming is most definitely not dead.
Antony: Many companies are reporting increased sales of PC hardware and gaming peripherals over the last few months due to the pandemic. Has Corsair also and do you think this trend will continue?
Harry: Even before the pandemic, we were growing but yes it has had an added knock-on effect in terms of sales. Gaming itself has been growing enormously over the last few years too. It’s obviously not an ideal or particularly nice way to see an increase in sales, but with more people being at home, demand for our products has definitely increased as they have for others in the PC gaming industry. But it’s taken us more than two decades to get here with steady growth so the recent surge in sales is only a very small part of that and where we are today. Our products and sales speak for themselves.
Antony: Corsair has already acquired brands such as Elgato – can we expect more acquisitions in future?
Harry: We have 21 different product lines at Corsair right now, but still plenty of places for us to grow in the PC ecosystem. Whether we branch out organically or through acquisitions is a case by case basis, we’re setting ourselves on a continued course of expansion and growth starting with new products this fall and the new funds will certainly help with that wider goal.
I’d like to thank Harry for taking the time to talk to me about Corsair’s news today. I’ll be back with more information and reviews of Nvidia’s new RTX 3000 series as well as news and rumors surrounding next-gen CPUs and other graphics cards so follow me here on Forbes, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Reddit for more PC hardware news and reviews.