The end is near for GoPro Inc (NASDAQ:GPRO) as we know it. A poor fourth quarter could drive the final nail in the coffin. As I said late last year, the GoPro brand name might survive, but GPRO stock is likely a lost cause just because there’s too little demand and too much competition for so-called “action cameras.”

Less than two weeks after that piece, the company confirmed my worst fears. GoPro pre-reported fourth-quarter sales numbers that were — to put it bluntly — stunningly short of expectations.

GoPro is looking at $340 million in Q4 revenue, versus analyst expectations (at the time) of around $470 million.

Yikes.

That news release talked of a turnaround in 2018, of course. But the question is, do current and would-be owners of GPRO stock have any good reason to believe this year is really going to be better than the past three have been?

GoPro is Beyond Salvaging

Just for the record, this was my conclusion on December 26th:

“There’s little doubt GoPro is the top name in this sliver of the camera market. It’s just a matter of capitalizing it and explaining clearly why more people should want action cameras and, then, further explaining why GoPros are superior devices. Unfortunately, doing so won’t overcome GoPro’s bigger problem — the action camera market’s just not that big.”

The action camera market hasn’t gotten any bigger since. Neither has the VR camera market. The drone market might be a little bigger now than it was then. But GoPro is getting out of the drone market, so…

Can we have this heart-to-heart talk now? It won’t take long. In fact, it will only take one sentence: Investors were bedazzled by “clever, cool and new,” mistaking it for “marketable, profitable and sustainable.”

That’s it. Nothing else.

Experts Agree

It’s not just me — though my pessimism is deep and wide, short-term and long-term. Morgan Stanley analyst Yuuji Anderson recently downgraded GPRO stock, noting “We think the market is giving too much credit [to GoPro]. Whether by itself or within another ecosystem, GoPro’s value is tied to its usability, and its earnings power remains at risk at the current pace of functional improvements.”

Things like “usability” and “strategic value” and “functionality” aren’t easy or quick to fix, if they can be fixed at all. As has been noted before, while GoPro makes the best action cameras in the world, there’s only so much a camera can or needs to do. Anderson’s doubts may be farther-reaching than most investors appreciate.

A Forbes technology contributor recently suggested that if GoPro doesn’t cut expenses or borrow money soon, it’s looking at bankruptcy.

Of course, it’s not like cutting expenses won’t crimp its ability to drive revenue, nor are lenders lining up to let the company borrow money.

These are all major problems that can’t simply be managed or massaged away. And these hurdles all have a lot to do with its core product itself.

Consumers can buy other action cameras that are almost as good for a lot less money… and the world doesn’t actually need a whole lot of action cameras to begin with.

Bottom Line for GPRO Stock

As tempting as it might seem to step into GPRO stock on the cheap here in case of a buyout — it’s down 50% since September — that’s not likely to be the best use of even your speculative money.

The time for the company to sell itself has passed. That was a year or more ago, when GoPro had some interesting projects on the table that just needed tweaking. Drones, editing software and a place for amateur videographers to post their digital movies were all interesting, and could have been sold as a project with a lot of potential in someone else’s hands. Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) and even Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) were floated as possible buyers that made sense.

Since then though, GoPro has hit a wall, becoming a project that’s not worth taking on.

That’s not to say GoPro will never sell itself. Indeed, that’s almost the inevitable outcome from this point.

It’s a matter of price though.

The company is on the defensive and losing value at a rapid pace. GoPro has no real negotiating leverage, and will likely have even less a year from now. This company just has more structural, strategic long-term problems than it can handle.

In other words, this is going to end, and it isn’t going to end well.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.