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Trading app Robinhood shares fell by around 8 percent on Tuesday after it released its third-quarter earnings report. The company revealed that its crypto revenue declined by 78 percent compared to the previous quarter due to lower retail trading activity, a trend that will likely continue until the end of 2021.
In its Q3 earnings report, Robinhood declared a net revenue of $365 million. However, the figure fell short of Refinitiv’s estimate of $431.5 million, according to CNBC.
Compared to the same period last year, the company’s third-quarter revenue rose by 35 percent year over year. However, it is still significantly lower compared to the second quarter of 2021’s revenue of $565 million.
The decline is due to its lower crypto trading volume for the third quarter. Crypto trading revenue for Q3 2021 declined by around 78 percent to just $51 million compared to the $233 million posted in the previous quarter, according to Decrypt. However, the latest figure is still significantly higher than the $5 million in crypto trading revenue for Q3 2020.
The decline in crypto revenue is primarily due to the waning popularity of DOGE during the latest quarter. “Q2 was kind of one of those idiosyncratic market events where there’s this massive interest specifically in doge,” Robinhood CFO Jason Warnick explained. “We love it when those moments happen. It’s a great way to bring a lot of new customers onto the platform. But we’re really thinking about investing in crypto over the long term. And so it’s you know, frankly, it’s gonna be impossible for us to accurately predict ... revenue on a quarter-to-quarter basis.”
Along with the decline in crypto trading activity, the platform’s monthly active users account dropped to 18.9 million in the third quarter. The figure represents an 11 percent decline from the 21.3 million active users in the second quarter.
On the plus side, more than 1 million customers have already signed up for Robinhood's upcoming crypto wallet. “This quarter was about developing more products and services for our customers, including crypto wallets,” Robinhood Markets co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev said. “More than one million people have joined our crypto wallets waitlist to date.”
However, the company expects lower crypto trading activity to continue in the fourth quarter this year. “For the three months ending December 31, 2021, we anticipate that many of the factors that impacted our third-quarter results, such as seasonal headwinds and lower retail trading activity, may persist,” Robinhood said.
