Robinhood Seeks $40B Valuation In IPO; New Users Soar

robinhood

Robinhood is seeking a $40 billion valuation in its initial public offering (IPO) following an increase in both profits and users, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Friday (July 2).

Revenues more than tripled to $959 million in 2020, up from $278 million in 2019, and this year is following that same trajectory, according to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. Since the start of the new year, registered users climbed to 31 million, with 18 million using funded accounts, up 151 percent over 2020.

Although the investment startup is fighting numerous investigations, Robinhood posted net income of $7 million last year. The company has been under scrutiny following a stock market rally that pushed meme stocks — such as GameStop and AMC — to new heights.

The filing follows the levy of a record-high $70 million penalty handed down by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in the U.S. The non-profit agency said the fine was due to the platform’s outages during robust trading that caused harm to its users. 

The company is also being investigated by the California Attorney General’s office and the New York Department of Financial Services. Robinhood put aside roughly $15 million to cover fines.

Robinhood’s IPO filing outlined the rally, which was partly responsible for the company’s surge in revenue from January to March of this year, according to FT. Robinhood borrowed $3.5 billion in convertible bonds as a way to handle the rally of investors. The Silicon Valley startup also posted a $1.4 billion net loss during that period.

The company said it had 18 million net funded accounts, up from12.5 million a year ago in March. Assets under custody were $80 billion, up from $19.2 billion. Within the assets under custody, cryptos came in at $11.6 billion over $481 million in March 2020.