Just A Day Before Listing, Coinbase Gets A Reference Share Price of $250 from Nasdaq
There’s a lot of excitement I the crypto community as crypto exchange Coinbase becomes the first crypto business to make its way to Wall Street. Later today, April 14, Coinbase’s COIN shares are all set to debut at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the U.S.
Just a day before the listing, Nasdaq has released an official announcement stating the Coinbase’s COIN share should start trading at a reference price of $250. Considering 266.2 million shares outstanding shares, this puts the company’s valuations at $66.5 billion.
Many analysts have already predicted a strong listing for the COIN shares and has thus given over $100 billion in valuations to the crypto giant. For e.g, just before the listing Coinbase’s implied valuations on the Nasdaq exchange turned out to be a massive $150 billion.
The Nasdaq announcement, however, notes that the reference price reflects the company’s past transactions and has been derived after consultation with coinable’s financial advisors. Besides, Nasdaq also made it clear that the reference point doesn’t reflect the opening price of the COIN stock.
It reads: “Please note that the reference price is NOT an offering price and nobody has purchased or sold shares at that price. The opening public price will be determined based on buy and sell orders in the opening auction on Nasdaq.”
In an excusing interview area of the listing with CNBC Squawk Box, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: “I do think that Coinbase has hopefully helped the industry move forward. We have done that with legitimising crypto, following a trusted and regulated approach. Hopefully $COIN going public and having its direct listing is going to be viewed as kind of a landmark moment for the crypto space”.
So far in 2021, there have been strong IPO listing in the U.S. As the CNBC report states: “the five significant direct listings that have taken place on the New York Stock Exchange — Spotify, Slack, Palantir, Asana, and Roblox — the opening price was on average about 37% above the reference price.”
If Coinbase manages to replicate this success, the $COIN shares will fetch a listing price of $343 per share taking the company valuations straight up to $90 billion and above. In another major surprise to its employees, Coinbase announced releasing $45 million in stock options to its employees. Thus, each of its employees is likely to receive 100 shares each worth $25,000 as of the reference price point.