Robinhood IPO will offer over 22 million Class A shares, whereby they will be priced at $16-$19 per stock.
Robinhood Markets Inc, an America-based fintech company, has inched its way towards a $30+ billion IPO deal following immense growth in the past year. Its rapid development is attributed to its trading platform’s user-friendliness and simplicity, making it popular among the younger generation. Currently, it boasts of about 13 million users and a net value of over $11 billion having experienced a revenue ascent to around $260 million in 2020 from around $110 million in 2019.
Nevertheless, Robinhood has faced heavy backlash and lawsuits in the past year. The iconic Berkshire Hathaway investor Warren Buffett discredited the company’s reputation for easy trading by saying that it promotes a casino-like behavior. His partner Charles Munger backed him up saying it makes the stock market a gamblers’ ground and it makes money in “dirty ways”.
Additionally, a complaint was filed by Massachusetts regulators against Robinhood. Accusations ranged from their gamification of trading and use of aggressive methods to failure in preventing disruptions and outages in their trading platform. Rich Repetto, a brokerage analyst from Piper Sandler, reported that the company’s “zero commission” statement was true, however, its order flow payments and high trading volumes did more than cater for the revenue gap.
Furthermore, multiple class-action lawsuits have hit the company following their trading outages last year. Many users reported being locked out of the trading platform during major moves. Recently also, users reported restrictions from purchasing volatile stocks and unresponsive customer service.
Robinhood reacted to critics, saying that their users preferred the new way of trading compared to traditional methods. The company also reiterated its transparency and distanced itself from any conflicts of interest in its business model. More recently, the company has improved their customer service one of their customers committed suicide.
Amidst the chaos, Robinhood’s iOS downloads increased exponentially and more than $3 billion was raised by venture capitalists.
Bigger Picture on Robinhood IPO
Robinhood completed all requirements for its $30+ billion IPO offering, with Nasdaq as its stock exchange preference. It also widened its executive team to include Silicon Valley and Wall Street veterans such as Amazon’s Jason Warnick.
Silicon Valley’s unicorn has continued to express its novelty by allowing non-professional investors access to its shares before its IPO debut. Robinhood IPO will offer over 22 million Class A shares, whereby they will be priced at $16-$19 per share. Consequently, Robinhood users can now purchase the company’s shares on the Robinhood app. This move is intended to decentralize investment by making it accessible to people of diverse financial status rather than professional traders and the wealthy few.
To encourage both novice and experienced investors, Robinhood has provided prospectus with detailed information on its IPO including its business model, administrative personnel, and risks of investment.
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