“Due to financial difficulty TrackingPoint will no longer be accepting orders. Thank you to our customers and loyal followers for sharing in our vision,” states a message at the top of the TrackingPoint website.
Huh? What?! Is TrackingPoint, the maker of arguably the first can’t-miss-long-range rifle, going out of business?
It’s unclear at this point what is going on. Executives at the headquarters in Pflugerville, Texas have yet to provide further detail as to what the future holds.
We do know that back in February TrackingPoint announced that it was restructuring, but at the time it also said, “The company believes it is the fastest-growing gun company in the world.”
According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, TrackingPoint reported revenue of $10 million in 2013. By August of 2014, TrackingPoint raised $29.1 million in funding against a stated goal of $29.2 million.
More from the Austin Business Journal:
TrackingPoint, which was founded in 2011, develops extreme long-distance rifles with digital scopes. In April 2013, it moved its headquarters from Austin to Pflugerville to build a $3 million, 500-yard ballistics testing lab.
Pflugerville gave the company incentives worth $5,000 per job it created and provided payment for a debt that was then added to its monthly lease of 48,000 square feet of space. TrackingPoint also paid $111,000 per year for an adjacent 19 acres on which it planned to building a shooting range — but never did, Floyd Akers, executive director of the Pflugerville Community Development Corp., told Austin Business Journal.
Akers told the ABJ that he was not able to get a hold of TrackingPoint CEO Frank Bruno to get to the bottom of the matter.
“It’s not a huge financial crisis for Pflugerville,” Akers said. “I don’t know if they’re shutting down yet.”
Let’s hope that TrackingPoint finds its footing and rights the ship. No one wants to see a good gun manufacturer go out of business.