Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Coinbase’s hotly anticipated public market debut is today.
And the cryptocurrency exchange is indicated to open at about $350 per share on the Nasdaq today, an increase from its Tuesday evening reference price which was $250, CNBC reports. The company’s shares are anticipated to start trading this afternoon.
Coinbase is going to go public by direct listing instead of going the traditional IPO route. The direct listing allows employees and existing shareholders to sell shares instantly at a market-based price, according to CNBC.
Coinbase released a set of quarterly numbers and projections last week that showed some interesting insights.
Here are the highlights for Q1 2021 (the three months ending on March 31, 2021) with QoQ performance where applicable:
- 56 million verified users, a 30% increase over Q4 2020 (43 million verified users).
- 6.1 monthly transacting users, a nearly 118% increase over Q4 2020 (2.8 million MTUs).
- $223 billion assets on platform, a nearly 145% increase over Q4 2020 results ($90 billion assets on platform).
- ~$1.8 billion in total revenue.
Bloomberg reported on Monday that Coinbase is expected to go public at a $100 billion valuation.
PitchBook Senior Analyst Robert Le told FinLedger that the company has seen strong user and revenue growth over the past 12 months. As a result it will show profits at market debut, and investors have rewarded it with a high valuation.
“However, we believe Coinbase will be hard-pressed to maintain its growth path as many competitors such as established incumbents like PayPal and Square or crypto startups like Binance and Kraken seek to attract Coinbase’s customers by lowering transaction fees,” Le said.
At the same time, he said that the company is “well-positioned to offset competitive and concentration risks by continuing to diversify its institutional business which includes prime brokerage and custodial services.”
Only time will tell how Coinbase ultimately fares.