Robinhood’s $32bn IPO stumbles, as shares fall up to 10% on debut

Last night the long-awaited Nasdaq debut of stock trending app Robinhood finally took place, although not quite as we’d expected.

Shares tumbled as much as 10 per cent in the first few minutes of trading, eventually recovering slightly to close the first day down 8.37 per cent.

The drop knocked Robinhood’s expected $32bn valuation to below $29.4bn, with its shares closing at $34.82, well below the $38 they were priced at.

Robinhood had surged in popularity earlier this year after becoming the favoured tool of Reddit group Wall Street Bets who used it to boost the stock prices of AMC and Gamestop, but Robinhood subsequently faced fines and regulatory pressure for its reliability and earlier outages.

The group had priced its shares at the low end of its IPO range of $38-$42, but clearly volatile trading, for which it has become so well known for enabling, turned around to bite the fintech.

Still, the float was a success for the company as it raised close to $2bn, with co-founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt both selling about $50m worth of shares.

“Six years ago, we launched with a mission to democratize finance for all. Today, Robinhood begins a new chapter as a publicly listed company,” the duo said yesterday.

“We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible, and have much further to go to truly democratize finance for all.”

Robinhood today claims to have some 22.5m funded accounts, up from 18m in the first quarter of 2021, and last raised venture capital funding at an $11.7bn valuation.