• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, August 2, 2018

Figuratively at least, smart wireless speaker maker Sonos hopes its initial public offering makes some noise when its executives ring in the trading day Thursday morning on Nasdaq. 

Literally, it will. Sonos will replace the traditional bell with its own newly concocted opening bell sound, and the company says that’s the sound the market will open to going forward. It will be the first new alteration of the Nasdaq opening clang in 18 years.

Sonos says the new bell is the creation of its “in-house sound experience team” led by two-time Grammy winner Giles Martin and the company’s scientists and audio engineers. Also lending an ear is Chris Jenkins, who won sound Oscars for “Out of Africa,” “The Last of the Mohicans” and most recently “Mad Max: Fury Road” (which he shared with with Ben Osmo and Gregg Rudloff). 

“We thought we should try to get some soul wrapped around it,” Jenkins says in a video that includes the new sound. The sound he said, had to “say” something, like, “Okay, let’s go to work!”

In the end, Jenkins says it was his dog that led to the sound. The dog’s barking outside caused Tibetan bowls in Jenkins’ office to reverberate. That was the sound, altered by layers of objects then used to ding it — wooden drumsticks, timpani mallets, brushes, screwdrivers, silverware, and “some 100 other objects.” 

And Martin thought he had the perfect end sound for the moneyed Nasdaq floor: The “bell” trails off with the sound of a spinning coin. 

Pealing bells is today’s Sonos story. But on Wednesday, Sonos was peeling back some from its earlier target price of selling IPO shares at $17-19 each and instead pricing 13.89 million shares at $15 per when the market opens. 

At that price, MarketWatch says, Sonos still will bring in at least $208 million, on company valuation of nearly $1.5 billion. Underwriters led by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have access to another two million shares, split between Sonos and selling shareholders. It will trade under the symbol SONO.

In documents filed with the SEC earlier, Sonos indicated it was on pace toward raking in $1 billion in sales this year. Its products are in nearly 7 million homes and, since 2002 when it began, Sonos has sold some 19 million wireless speakers in homes. Competition is heating up, though, and the emergence of smart speakers from Amazon and Google is changing the market.