The company will be taken over by its main supplier, the Chinese company Picea. Shareholders' equity will be completely wiped out in the transaction.
They will recall with dismay that three years ago, Amazon offered to buy their company for $61 per share, before being blocked by European competition authorities.
iRobot's business has become considerably more complicated since the end of the pandemic, with a flood of low-cost autonomous vacuum competitors arriving from Asia.
Roomba's market share suddenly melted away, and between 2021 and 2024, the group's revenue was halved over three years.
Being directly integrated into Amazon's distribution and marketing infrastructure was the only viable path for iRobot. Unlike Dyson, all its attempts to diversify beyond its core business had failed.
In this respect, there had long been reason to worry about the sustainability of its profits.
But the group's most strategic mistake was wasting the profits of the good years (between 2016 and 2021) on share buybacks.
Not only were these buybacks carried out at unreasonable valuations, which in itself is already a mistake, but above all, those precious resources should have been reinvested in the business and its capacity for innovation.
