Co-founders and co-CEOs of Robinhood Baiju Bhatt and Vladimir Tenev
News Savings And Investment
Robinhood files for IPO just two days after landmark fine
The fintech has chosen the ticker symbol ‘HOOD’ for its debut on the NASDAQ later on this year.
It’s been a busy week for trading and investment platform Robinhood.
Earlier this week the fintech found itself in hot water with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) after a spate of misinformation and outages led to thousands of customer complaints.
Robinhood was ordered to pay a $57m fine as well as a $12.6m reimbursement to customers as a result of the misleading information, which dates all the way back to September 2016.
Late last night, the trading app finally filed its registration statement for its proposed initial public offering (IPO).
Back in March 2021, Robinhood confidentially submitted a draft application with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its IPO, choosing to remain vague about the specifics.
To help guide it through its stock market debut, Robinhood has picked Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as joint lead book-running managers, with the fintech also turning to Barclays, Citigroup and Wells Fargo for guidance.
According to people familiar with the company, Robinhood is targeting a valuation of $40bn or more when it lists on the NASDAQ under the ticker ‘HOOD’ later this year, its current valuation is just shy of $12bn.
The filing comes after Robinhood experienced unprecedented growth, tripling revenues from $278m in 2019 to a whopping $959m last year and looks set to more than triple its revenue this year again, with the fintech reporting a revenue of $502m in the first half of 2021 alone.
Robinhood has also more than doubled its number of users in the first half of 2021 alone. The fintech now counts 31m users, 18m of which are active on the platform.
The trading platform was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Reddit vs Wall Street Saga, with Robinhood getting caught up in the middle of the whirlwind thanks to it halting the trading of ‘meme stocks’ and subsequently facing the wrath of its customers and even celebrities and politicians.
Robinhood has long had a penchant for raising huge sums of cash, raising $3.5bn this year alone, and it’s hoped the IPO will help it raise even more.
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