Robinhood CFO says market volatility didn’t scare traders away from buying chip stocks ‘that they had really done research on’ Semiconductor stocks have been on a wild ride this year, but that hasn’t deterred retail traders from buying them up. Shiv Verma, chief financial officer of the trading app Robinhood, told MarketWatch on Tuesday that even as chip stocks get upended by concerns about artificial-intelligence spending, traders on the platform bought the dip during the third quarter. Don’t Short Yourself offers weekly money tips to help you earn it, stack it and grow it.
I would like to receive updates and special offers from Dow Jones and affiliates. I can unsubscribe at any time. Verma made his remarks shortly before Robinhood’s stock fell 4.7% after hours Tuesday, following third-quarter results that missed Wall Street’s expectations.
The company’s revenue rose 12% from a year earlier to $1.42 billion in the third quarter, as big revenue gains in prediction markets, stocks and options — along with services related to so-called Trump accounts — were offset by a 55% drop in crypto revenue. Robinhood earned 51 cents a share, down 16% from the same quarter last year. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Robinhood to report third-quarter earnings per share of 56 cents, on revenue of $1.44 billion.
Robinhood and rival trading platforms have been rolling out new services to compete for users. Analysts have zeroed in on the platform’s rapidly growing prediction-market business following this summer’s World Cup and the start of the NFL season. Verma said election-related bets were picking up steam as the U.S. midterms approach.
Robinhood recently launched AI trading agents as well as stock tokens and a social-trading platform. It also plans to introduce 24/7 trading for some stocks, pending regulatory review. Meanwhile, the broader market has worried about higher oil prices and artificial-intelligence spending.
Robinhood has also dealt with slumping crypto markets over much of this year, with the price of bitcoin still well off highs reached last summer. Robinhood’s event-contracts revenue, or the money it makes from prediction markets, jumped more than sixfold to $173 million in the third quarter. Options revenue rose 31% to $399 million, and equities revenue came in at $121 million, up 41%.
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