Even now, on its IPO day, Robinhood would be valued almost as much as Credit Suisse and Standard Chartered Bank combined.
On July 29, Robinhood Markets, which democratised investing by pioneering commission-free trading for stocks, ETFs, options and cryptocurrencies as well as trading of fractional shares, will list on Nasdaq at a valuation of over US$35 billion ($47.61 billion). It will be the second biggest listing of a FinTech firm following cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s US$51 billion IPO earlier this year. Last November, China’s Ant Group, the giant FinTech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which was seeking to list at a valuation of US$313 billion, had its IPO pulled just 36 hours before trading of its shares could begin in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
In some ways, Robinhood, which has over 18 million active customers on its platform and US$81 billion assets in custody, is a tad late to the party. By its own admission, growth is already slowing from the massive boom in retail trading early this year at the height of the mania in millennial stock darlings like GameStop. Robinhood raked in US$522 million in revenues in the January-March quarter, up 303% over the previous year. Had it gone public at the time, some market gurus believe the retail brokerage behemoth would have commanded a valuation of over US$75 billion.
