Should you buy Coinbase stock? 2-minute analysis

For more detailed analysis visit our website: https://www.overlookedalpha.com Today it emerged that Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX was facing a liquidity crisis. The price of the FTX token dropped 85% and rival binance stepped in to bail out the exchange, pending due diligence. This had spillover effects throughout the crypto markets with bitcoin down 5%, ethereum down 9% and Coinbase down 10.8%, at the time of recording. Based on today's share price, Coinbase now has a market cap of 11.5 billion dollars. With 5 billion in cash and 3.4 billion in debt, the enterprise value is roughly 9.9 billion. Even before today’s developments Coinbase, the business, was not doing well. At its peak in the fourth quarter of 2021, Coinbase generated 2.5 billion in revenue and 840 million in net income. In its most recent quarter, revenues had dropped to just 576 million and a net loss of 545 million. In other words the company is not making a profit and is valued at around 2 times trailing twelve month revenue. Meanwhile trading volume on the platform has dropped -70% since 2021, assets on the platform have dropped by 64% but operating expenses have climbed by 12%. Crucially, peak revenues from 2021 show no sign of coming back. The FTX debacle is the latest crisis to hit the crypto markets following the collapse of Luna, Celsius, Voyager and others. These events destroy confidence and cause investors to pull their money out of crypto. Trading losses also reduce the total amount of assets on the platform which Coinbase relies on to generate income. But even if bitcoin stages a dramatic comeback from here, Coinbase is still not a particularly good business. It makes most of its money from trading commissions but huge competition in the industry means that trading commissions will inevitably trend to zero over time squeezing the company’s margins. Other ventures such as NFTs sound interesting but they contribute little to top line revenue and are not enough to base an investment case on. On the positive side, Coinbase doesn’t engage in leveraged trading which makes it a less risky bet than other crypto exchanges. It also earned 102 million in interest income last quarter thanks to higher interest rates. Even so, it will be a while before Coinbase returns to profitability and there appears very little reason to buy the stock. But these are my personal opinions, not financial advice. For more detailed analysis, visit our website.