Robinhood Approves $1.5B Share Buyback

Stock and crypto trading platform Robinhood has approved to buy back $1.5 billion worth of its shares.

Robinhood said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday that the company’s board of directors approved the $1.5 billion share repurchase program, which it will carry out over the next three years.

The program includes $1.1 billion in new incremental capacity, with the remainder rolled over from an older repurchase program.

“Robinhood is a generational company with a massive long-term opportunity,” Robinhood financial chief Shiv Verma said in a statement. “This authorization reflects the confidence of our management team and board in our ability to continue delivering innovative products for customers and creating value for shareholders while returning capital over time.”

The stock buyback, typically seen as signaling that a company believes its stock is undervalued, comes as shares in Robinhood (HOOD) have struggled so far this year amid a broad downturn in stocks and crypto.

Robinhood also said that its subsidiary, Robinhood Securities, entered a $3.25 billion revolving credit facility with JPMorgan Chase, replacing the prior $2.65 billion facility. It can expand by up to $1.62 billion, bringing the maximum credit to $4.87 billion. 

Robinhood stock tanks nearly 5%

Shares in Robinhood ended trading on Tuesday, down 4.7% to $69.08, closing at the lowest level this year. The stock slightly recovered to $70.90 after hours.

Robinhood’s stock is down almost 39% so far this year and has lost 54.7% since its October all-time high of $152.46, as broader macroeconomic concerns and the Iran war impact stocks.

However, Robinhood’s share price over the past 12 months has seen it gain nearly 43% as its expanded into other products such as prediction markets and banking.

Analyst sentiment aggregator TipRanks puts the 12-month average Robinhood stock price forecast at $123.85 and agrees that the stock is a “strong buy” based on 16 Wall Street analysts.

Related: SEC gives go-ahead to Nasdaq for tokenized trading trial

Robinhood Chain to launch this year 

Despite its share price woes, Robinhood remains committed to crypto and real-world asset tokenization, launching its own Ethereum layer-2 network to testnet in February.

CEO Vlad Tenev said that the network processed 4 million transactions in its first week of public testnet activity.

Robinhood Chain is designed to support tokenized equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other traditional financial instruments, and the mainnet launch is planned for later this year.

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