US Brokerage Robinhood IPO Price Set at $38, Valuing Company at 37 Trillion Won

Listed on Nasdaq Stock Exchange on the 29th

[Photo by AFP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Byunghee Park] U.S. online brokerage Robinhood will be listed on the Nasdaq market on the 29th (local time).

On the 28th, a day before the listing, Bloomberg reported that Robinhood's public offering price per share was set at $38. Robinhood was valued at approximately $32 billion (about 36.688 trillion KRW).

Robinhood's public offering price per share was decided at the lowest end of the expected price range ($38?$42). Robinhood announced that it raised $2.1 billion by selling a total of 55 million shares.

Robinhood's initial public offering (IPO) size is the seventh largest in the U.S. stock market this year.

Vlad Tenev, CEO, and Baiju Bhatt, Chief Creative Officer (CCO), who co-founded Robinhood in 2013 as Stanford University alumni, have become wealthy through Robinhood's listing.

Robinhood attracted individual investors by emphasizing its strength of no trading commissions. Especially, the "meme stock" craze, including GameStop earlier this year, brought in a large number of young customers. Robinhood's active users increased to 17.7 million in the first quarter of this year, double the 8.6 million from a year ago.

However, it also faced criticism for causing harm to customers due to service interruptions and providing incorrect information. The U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fined Robinhood $57 million at the end of last month for causing harm to customers and ordered it to pay $126 billion in compensation to affected customers. Earlier in June, a user in their 20s who traded options using Robinhood mistakenly believed they had lost $720,000 and committed suicide.

Robinhood posted a loss of $107 million in 2019 but turned profitable last year with a net income of $7.45 million. Revenue increased from $278 million in 2019 to $959 million last year.