Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong
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The Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange reached a default valuation of $ 68 billion before the expected direct listing on the Nasdaq.
The latest valuation is based on a weighted average volume price of the Coinbase share quoted in a revised S-1 record released on Wednesday. The company reported trading private shares at $ 343.58 a piece for the first quarter of 2021 ended March 15, 13 times the company’s valuation.
According to PitchBook data, the company was last valued at $ 8 billion in October 2018.
The revised regulated filing also shows that the company has over 196 million shares outstanding for the first quarter of 2021, resulting in the latest valuation figure. While the private market value is less indicative of the value of a company’s stock, Nasdaq will use this information to set a reference price for the company before its direct listing.
“Those secondary market shares help provide a benchmark for where they could be valued in the public market, but we give them less weight than, say, if the company raised money from us. investors at that level, ”said Matthew Kennedy, Senior IPO Market Strategist at Renaissance Capital.
Coinbase’s first filing in February showed that the company reported a profit of $ 322 million on net income last year, which doubled to $ 1.1 billion.
Direct listing is an alternative to an IPO and involves investors and employees who convert their ownership shares into listed shares. The founders have become increasingly disappointed with the IPO process in recent years, leading to an increase in direct listings and special purpose procurement vehicles.
Companies such as Roblox, Spotify, Slack and Palantir became public through direct listings on the New York Stock Exchange. Coinbase will be Nasdaq’s first major direct list.
The exuberance around cryptocurrencies has grown steadily in the last year. Bitcoin, in particular, has gained greater acceptance among ordinary companies and investors. On Wednesday, CNBC learned exclusively that Morgan Stanley became the first large bank in the United States to offer its wealth management clients access to bitcoin funds. Meanwhile, large companies, including Square and Tesla, have bought several bitcoins in recent months.
In the initial record, Coinbase listed potential bitcoin price declines as one of the risk factors. The company has more than 43 million users trading digital assets in more than 100 countries, according to the record.
Bitcoin was traded on Tuesday with just over $ 56,000 per coin, according to the currency’s values. The cryptocurrency had never traded more than $ 20,000 before December.
According to the latest record, Coinbase intends to issue nearly 115 million shares of Class A common shares. The company, ranked 10th on the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, will trade under the COIN symbol.