Raspberry Pi earnings beat expectations on demand and higher prices

By Paul Sandle

LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) – Single-board computing company Raspberry Pi reported a better-than-expected 25% rise in annual earnings, helped by strengthening demand and price increases linked to higher memory chip costs, sending its shares up 26% on Tuesday.

The British company shipped 4 million units in the second half, giving a total of 7.6 million for the year, up 7% on 2024.

Constraints in the DRAM memory market as cloud providers and hyperscalers have ordered huge amounts of memory have caused prices to rise sharply.

The memory used in around two-thirds of Raspberry Pi’s products had increased in price by around seven times in the last 12 months, the company said.

RASPBERRY PI HAS PASSED ON COST INCREASE

Chief Executive Eben Upton said Raspberry Pi had been able to pass on the increase in memory costs through its supportive channel partners.

“It’s probably not done, so we’ll keep passing those through,” he told Reuters. “Obviously it’s painful for an organisation that prides itself on being cost effective.”

Resellers price the Raspberry Pi 5, its flagship board, with 8GB of memory, at around $125.

Shares in the company, which went public in June 2024 at 280 pence a share, jumped 26% in early deals to 365.5 pence.

The company said it had also seen strong growth in its semiconductor product range, with 8.4 million units shipped, up 47% on 2024 and exceeding single board computers and compute modules in volumes for the first time.

Raspberry Pi said the sales momentum had carried into the opening months of this year, but cautioned that second-half visibility was limited. 

Increased memory costs and associated changes in product pricing would result in “substantially higher” revenues this year, it said, with profits expected to be in line with market forecasts.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by James Davey and Barbara Lewis)