Coinbase had a rollercoaster of a day as their stock price showed lots of volatility. The listing also opened up more conversations in the IPO vs DPO differences. Before the conversation shifted to Coinbase all the market talk was on Nvidia as they released a chip perhaps ready to compete with Intel and AMD. Through both of these stories a slightly less talked about scenario took place upon earnings reports for big banks.
Coinbase’s Rollercoaster IPO, or DPO?
On Wednesday April 4th of 2021 Coinbase ($COIN) created a wave of excitement for investors interested in owning a piece of the cryptocurrency marketplace giant. This has been a conversation circulating for some time now, but it seems like $COIN listed their stock rather quickly. How did they do this?
It all starts with a discussion regarding how companies go about listing their stock on a public market. There are two main ways in which a stock can be listed, they are Initial Public Offerings (IPO) and the lesser known of the two Direct Public Offerings (DPO), also known as direct listings. Both of these options come with advantages and disadvantages, but DPO’s have been gaining popularity recently. Some ways that Coinbase may have benefited from
issuing a DPO rather than an IPO is mainly related to cost. In a DPO company’s save on underwriter fees, which in return also allows for a much quicker process. Since the company doesn't need to partner with institutional banks to provide underwriting services they are able to skip the time it takes to perform these tasks. The DPO process also has some benefits for retail investors as well as employees and insiders. For retail investors it creates a level playing field where they gain access to purchase the stock at the same time as institutional investors. For employees and insiders that own shares of the company they have the ability to convert and sell their shares during a time where the public is raising the price.
Unfortunately for many there was little to gain by the time the company was trading on the market. The Nasdaq issued a reference price at just $250 per share, but as we often see the price was little to no reference point by the time it was active. Trading began around 1:30 PM EST at $381 before quickly shooting past the $400 mark and topping at $425. Perhaps this stock was just overvalued or insiders and employees dumped their stock when it hit all time highs. By the time the final bell rang $COIN was selling at $328, while their low for the day
was $310. Some lessons can be learned here by analyzing similar DPO’s from the past. Spotify ($SPOT), the popular music streaming service, also debuted through a direct listing. NYSE gave a reference point of $132, but shares began selling at $165 before bottoming out at $149 on their first day of trading. We can see a tremendous amount of volatility on the first day of trading on these very popular listings. The debut price is almost always going to be above the reference price, especially for household names, because they bring with them a lot of publicity. In most cases the stock will also close lower than then the debut price, as it did for both $COIN and $SPOT. Since their listing on the exchange Spotify covered a lot of ground seeing about a 174% return from their initial public price to the $287.60 at the time of writing. As for Coinbase it is not certain if they will be able to bolster similar results, but with the rise in popularity of Bitcoin and Ethereum it’s likely that interest in their stock will remain for some time to come.
Nvidia’s New Grace Chips vs Intel’s New CEO
This week Nvidia ($NVDA) announced the release of their new CPU called Grace. This chip is designed to be used for neural network workloads. This is a very strategic play for $NVDA as they work towards creating a CPU that could directly compliment their GPU’s. Arm Holdings, a semiconductor and software designer company, and their partner company Nvidia both believe strongly that a hybrid approach at CPU and GPU modeling will not work in the future. With the acquisition of Arm along with the Grace CPU Nvidia is positioning themselves in a place where their companies growth could continue for much longer than previously believed.
Where does this leave their top competitors AMD and Intel? AMD started their week hovering around the $82 mark but dipped to a low of $78.14 on the week following news of Grace. At the time of writing they have picked up their losses and look to close the week around $83. As for Intel they saw a steep drop off to open the week falling from $68.18 to $65.52 in a matter of 30 minutes. Their stock price bottomed out at $64.02 and hasn’t seen the same success as AMD did as their shares look to close around $65.
How has Intel responded to the news? Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel, has said that he believes Nvidia’s approach is in response to the work being done at Intel. $NVDA on the other hand has said that Grace is not meant to disrupt Intel or AMD, but it's there to provide better support to their GPU’s now and in the future. With the announcement of Gelsinger as the new CEO of Intel and the approach that Nvidia has been taking it is an interesting time for these technology companies.
Why Did JPMorgan Stock Fall and Wells Fargo Rise When Both Reported Spectacular Earnings?
JPMorgan ($JPM) and Wells Fargo ($WFC) had earnings announcements this week which both beat analyst expectations. $JPM opened at about $152.99 and after announcing great earnings their stock dropped to lows of $149.69 or about 2.2%. One of their competitors $WFC also announced strong earnings on Wednesday. Instead of the small decline that $JPM saw $WFC realized a near 7% increase from $39.29 to $42.24. The highlights of $JPM results were revenue of $33.12 billion, beating an estimate of $30.52 billion. $WFC had revenue of $18.06 billion beating an estimate of $17.5 billion. On a per share basis $JPM soared to earnings of $4.50 per share. $WFC beat an earnings per share estimate of $0.70 by $0.35 to finish Q1 with an EPS of $1.05.
So why did we see different trends between these two banks? JPMorgan is Wall Street's biggest bank with a very nice valuation to go along side that. Wells Fargo is also a big bank, but they are still recovering from the account fraud scandal. It is our view that while $JPM posted great Q1 numbers the market is very excited for technology stocks such as those mentioned previously ($COIN or $NVDA). Though $JPM isn't exactly a boring stock its one of less interest as the market settles their fear of rising inflation. As for $WFC the rise in their stock price could possibly be a result of excitement to see growth and value being added back to the company.
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