Coinbase Publishes Finances Ahead of Mega IPO
Coinbase more than doubled its revenue last year and booked a profit for the first time, the exchange revealed in paperwork filed with the regulator as it pushes for a stock listing on public markets. The offering could fetch the highest valuation of any US tech company on its market debut.
Coinbase’s S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed that it booked revenue of $1.14 billion in 2020 and net income of $322 million. In the previous year, its revenue stood at $483 million and it registered a loss of $30.4 million.
Estimates of Coinbase’s valuation have climbed in recent weeks, as it wends its way through the initial public offering (IPO) process. It was valued at $100 billion in private market trading last week, up from $77 billion the week before.
Bitcoin fell from $51,839 to as low as $44,060 in the last 24 hours of trading.
The vast majority of companies that went public last year were unprofitable, according to Bloomberg. This means Coinbase’s rapid growth, high revenues and significant profits are likely to be prized in the market.
Coinbase’s eventual public offering is likely to increase its valuation, making it the largest IPO of any US tech company since Facebook, according to Axios. Facebook was valued at $104 billion upon listing.
The Coinbase filing is a trove of information about the largest US cryptocurrency exchange. The firm revealed it holds about $230 million in Bitcoin and $53 million in Ether on its own balance sheet. Coinbase would be among the public companies that hold cryptocurrencies in their treasuries, like MicroStrategy, Square and Tesla.
The Coinbase filing shows that institutional trading volume accounts for an increasingly large part of its business. Trading volumes from institutions grew from about 20% in the first quarter of 2018 to 66% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to data compiled from the filing by The Block. Institutional business for 2020 stood at 63% of $192 billion traded.
Coinbase reported a jump of 34% in verified users to 43 million in 2020 compared to the previous year. The number of monthly transacting users rose 180% to 2.8 million last year, according to data compiled from the filing by Bloomberg.
Coinbase is choosing to offer its shares publicly with a method known as a direct listing, which lets individual investors access the stock at the same time as institutions. It won’t raise any new funds with the offering. Coinbase plans to trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker COIN.
