The last few trading days bridged two separate years for the FinTech IPO Index, as the last calendar page turned on 2024.
And as Thursday’s trading wrapped up, ushering in the first volatile day in the markets for 2025, the overall markets got off to a shaky start — and most names in our Index, too, were lower.
Call it a bit of profit taking, perhaps; none too far-fetched an idea given that fact that through the last year, the FinTech IPO Index was up by roughly 58%.
Looking out on the trailing five days, the Index slipped 3.6% even as headlines were scarce. The platforms — notably, Blend, which gave up 14.9%, Lemonade, which was off by 11.8%, and SoFi, whic slid 11.8% — led to the downside.
SoFi shares slipped, as reported this past week through sites including Reuters, in the wake of a downgrade from sell-side research firm KBW on Wall Street. KBW downgraded SoFi on concerns over valuation and financial targets. The downgrade, which rated SoFi’s stock as “underperform,” sports a price target of $8, nearly half of SoFi’s stock ahead of the downgrade. “The stock’s valuation has become overstretched across a wide matrix of multiples,” the report stated.
The losses noted above were at least partially blunted by the 23% rise in Katapult.
Huize shares were down 7.4%. Huize told investors on Tuesday (Dec. 31) that it received a notification letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. stating that Huize has regained compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements. The stock price of the company’s ADS had been at least $1 for 10 consecutive days.
Separately, Robinhood shares were down a slight 0.4%, having soared triple digits in 2024 and earning Yahoo Finance’s “comeback stock of the year” accolade. In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Robinhood Vlad Tenev noted the potential to capture more retail trading assets in the United States.
“We’re bigger than when we started, but some of these guys, like the Schwabs and the Fidelitys, have $10 trillion in assets,” Tenev said. “So we’re still growing, but our assets are growing 40%-plus year over year, rather than 2% to 3%.”
Nubank’s stock was 2.9% higher through the week, where the company had garnered coverage earlier in December as digital lender Tyme said that that it had raised $250 million in a Series D funding round, bringing its value to $1.5 billion. Nubank is among Tyme’s investors.
Tyme, whose TymeBank has more than 15 million customers across South Africa and the Philippines, said its partnership with Nubank gives it the expertise and resources to expand its market presence. The $250 million raised in this round is well above the $150 million the company had been targeting when it announced the Series D earlier this year.
Janover shares gathered 1.4%. The company said Monday (Dec. 30) that it will seek to begin accepting payments in bitcoin, ethereum and solana for what it termed “select services, underscoring the company’s commitment to innovation within evolving market trends. This decision aligns with the increasing support for digital assets on both a domestic policy level and within broader financial markets,” the company said in its release.
