Bullish increases size of IPO by nearly 60% to US$990m
Bullish, the Thomas Farley-led crypto exchange, is now seeking to raise up to US$990m from its NYSE IPO after both upsizing and increasing the valuation being targeted on the offering.
A syndicate of banks led by JP Morgan, Jefferies and Citigroup revised terms on the offering early Monday to 30m shares marketed at US$32–$33, versus the original US$28–$31 range on a deal sized at 20.3m shares. They are closing the books at 4:00pm Monday, a full day ahead of pricing after the market close Tuesday, followed by a Wednesday debut.
The offering is multiple times oversubscribed with significant interest from long-only mutual funds despite the significant increase in the offering size, the banks told investors.
That long-only interest includes US$200m of upfront demand from Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management and BlackRock.
At the top of the revised range, Bullish is targeting an enterprise value of US$4.8bn, a roughly 14.5x multiple of 2026 Ebitda being projected by the underwriting banks. The much larger Coinbase trades at a 21.3x multiple of 2026 Ebitda, according to LSEG data.
In an unusual move, Bullish is taking delivery of the proceeds as a mix of cash and stablecoin, providing efficiency and certainty in execution. This is a novel provision on a traditional IPO and contrasts with cash delivery and self-executing purchases, though it is now commonplace on SPAC IPO mergers, bankers involved in the offering process previously told IFR.
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.
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.
Bullish is headed by Thomas Farley, the former CEO of both the NYSE Group and current NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange. The company is asking for a lot of credit for continued growth, and investors appear willing to pay.
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.