Bullish brokers twist on US$630m NYSE IPO
Bullish, a five-year-old crypto exchange headed by former NYSE Group boss Thomas Farley, is seeking to raise US$630m from its NYSE IPO in mid-August, with a portion of the money being used to acquire stablecoin.
Rather than purchase the stablecoin with cash raised, Bullish is having investment banks handle the back-end plumbing, limiting friction and ensuring its maximum take. The cash-plus-crypto delivery on a traditional IPO is a first, though it has become commonplace on SPAC IPO mergers, a banker involved in the Bullish offering told IFR.
The front end of the IPO saw JP Morgan, Jefferies and Citigroup launch marketing on Monday, August 4, on the sale of 20.3m new shares at US$28–$31 for pricing after the market close Tuesday, August 12. Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management and BlackRock committed upfront to invest US$200m in the offering, or about one third of the total offering.
Hypothetically, Bullish could elect to take half the money in cash and the rest in stablecoin, with the exact coin (USDT, USDC, DAI) yet to be determined. Management have yet to formalise that decision, the banker said.
As of March 31, Bullish held US$144m worth of stablecoin, US$1.735bn of bitcoin, US$22m of Ethereum and US$33m of other digital assets.
“We now intend to IPO because we believe that the digital assets industry is beginning its next leg of growth,” Bullish CEO Thomas Farley said in a letter to prospective investors. “We view transparency and compliance as hallmarks of how we operate Bullish, and believe those values align well with the public capital markets.”
Farley is the former CEO of both the NYSE Group and current NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
Currency for M&A
Bullish has grown rapidly through acquisitions, including the purchases of crypto data and analytics providers CoinDesk and CCData in 2023 and 2024. Going public will provide currency for additional acquisitions.
In the trailing 12 months ended March 31, Bullish generated US$51m of adjusted Ebitda on revenue of US$250m.
At the US$29.50 midpoint of the marketing range, Bullish is targeting an enterprise value of US$4.2bn on the IPO or about 12.5 times 2026 Ebitda. That is cheap relative to the 22 times multiple at which Coinbase currently trades but implies a material step-up in Ebitda by 2026.
USDC stablecoin provider Circle Internet, whose shares skyrocketed 168.5% on debut in June and have since increased more than fivefold, is the other obvious comp. In addition to the stablecoin tie-ins, Circle’s US$1.05bn NYSE IPO was led by JP Morgan and Citigroup and saw Ark Investment step up with a US$150m cornerstone investment.
Interestingly, Ark held 2.92m Circle shares as of June 30, worth about US$470m at current prices but implying it sold some of the shares received on the IPO, if the US$150m order (4.8m shares) was fully filled, according to LSEG data.
Bullish’s main exchange business last year processed US$284.8bn worth of bitcoin and US$144.5bn of Ethereum, giving it a 35% and 44% market share. In the first quarter, the exchange traded an average of US$2.5bn worth of bitcoin per day, according to information in its prospectus.
In addition to spot trading, the exchange recently introduced futures contracts.
The purchases of CoinDesk and CCData provide fee-related income from index administration and data services.