The platforms surged — many of them anyway.
And yet the FinTech IPO Index was up a muted 1.5% headed into the end of the second quarter and headed into a trading week that will be shortened by the July Fourth holiday.
Opendoor was up 28.7%. As noted by sites such as Investing.com, JMP Securities doubled its price target on the stock to $5 from $2.50. Analysts wrote that the company should benefit from a better macro backdrop for housing prices.
“While overall home transaction volumes are still low, median home price volatility has stabilized and has begun to increase. This suggests that [the company] can deliver better top-line revenue on higher average home selling prices and higher contribution profits than we originally estimated,” the sell-side firm said in the note.
Enfusion gained 22%. The company has been in the crosshairs, Reuters reported, of several firms, including Francisco Partners, Vista Equity Partners, and Irenic Capital Management. Irenic, in particular, has reportedly had discussions about taking the company private.
Robinhood was up 5.5%. As reported this week the company has laid off about 150 employees, or 7% of its workforce. The job cuts were made in response to a slowdown in trading volumes and to “better align team structures,” per reports. The job cuts included roles in customer experience and platform shared services; customer trust and safety; and safety and productivity, according to the WSJ report.
In a statement provided to PYMNTS, the company said, “We’re ensuring operational excellence in how we work together on an ongoing basis. In some cases, this may mean teams make changes based on volume, workload, org design, and more.”
The latest cuts follow a round where the company laid off 9% of its staff in April of last year. As we noted in coverage of the company’s most recent earnings call, its monthly active users (MAU) increased by around 400,000 to 11.8 million for the most recent quarter, that total was nearly half of the platform’s 21.3 million MAU count during retail investing’s peak in the second quarter of 2021.
These gains were muted by Paysafe’s share slide as the company gave up 5.7%. The company is set to end its role providing euro deposits and withdrawals via bank transfer beginning in September.
“At that time, our users will need to update the banking details used to deposit to their Binance accounts and may be required to accept new terms and conditions to continue using SEPA services after this date,” a spokesperson told PYMNTS on Thursday (June 29).
Separately a Paysafe spokesperson provided PYMNTS with this statement that noted, “Following a strategic review, we have taken the decision to cease offering our embedded wallet solution to Binance across the region. Paysafe and Binance are now working to mutually implement an orderly and fair process to terminate this service over the next few months.”
OneConnect gave up 28%. There has not been much in the way of company-specific news since an article earlier in the month that appeared in the South China Morning Post, and where company executives said that Ping An OneConnect Bank, the Hong Kong virtual lender indirectly owned by mainland Chinese insurer Ping An Insurance, will look to boost lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, with a focus on the retail sector.
Elsewhere, Doma’s 1-for-25 reverse stock split became effective on Thursday just before midnight, and the 25% decline in the stock in the past five sessions helped temper advancing issues in the FinTech IPO Index.
