While most of the more exciting Q1 earnings results have already been released, there are still a few hot stocks that have yet to report their results. One closely watched company that did report its results prior to the weekend was the first publicly-listed cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN). Ever since first going public earlier this year in what was the most anticipated public offering of 2021, investors have been looking forward to seeing how its first public quarterly results would turn out. For the most part, the numbers were great, although investors didn’t seem to excited about the results, which managed to fall slightly short of some analyst expectations.
Looking at Coinbase’s Q1 results, the crypto exchange reported a solid $1.6 billion in revenue for its first quarter, more than tripled the $497 million reported just in the previous quarter of Q4 2020, and drastically more than the $179 million seen in Q1 2020. While normally this would be a phenomenal number, it was actually a bit shy of most analysts’ expectations, which we’re hoping to see something around $1.8 billion.
Earnings were also slightly off the market, with the company’s Earnings-per-share (EPS) coming in at $3.05, versus the consensus estimate of $3.20. Missing both of these figures ended up sending the stock dipping a bit. However, quickly afterward, many Wall Street analysts ended up upgrading the company, even despite missing slightly on these targets.
One such analyst was Piper Sandler’s Richard Repetto, who started coverage of Coinbase with an optimistic “Buy.” He expects the rest of the year to be a great time for Coinbase, as well as any other crypto exchanges that expect to go public soon.
“In our view, COIN is the most scaled play in the crypto space, an asset class that has the potential, in our view, to reshape financial services and the technology underpinning it,” Repetto wrote in a note to clients prior to the weekend.
Other analysts, like Oppenheimer’s Owen Lau, said the company has a bright future ahead of it, despite competition from decentralized exchanges like UniSwap. BTIG analyst Mark Palmer also said that Q2 should be another great quarter, regardless of whether Coinbase can triple its revenue figures in just three months again.
Coinbase also announced during its Q1 results that it plans to include the hotly traded meme coin Dogecoin to its listing. Unlike exchanges like Binance, which offer over 300 different tokens, Coinbase only has around 50 at the moment.
Shares of Coinbase were actually down a bit in response to the news but then picked back up a bit. Right now, Coinbase is down 2.5%. However, in the long-term, the company’s prospects look incredibly bright, especially since we’re in the midst of the biggest crypto boom in history.
Coinbase Company Profile
Coinbase Global Inc is a provider of end-to-end financial infrastructure and technology for the crypto-economy. It generates substantially all its net revenue from transaction fees from trades that occur on its platform. Geographically, it derives a vast majority of its revenues from the US followed by the rest of the world. – Warrior Trading News
