Robinhood makes headway beyond trading

Niket Nishant and Manya Saini
Updated ·3 min read
The logo of Robinhood Markets, Inc. is seen at a pop-up event on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City

By Niket Nishant and Manya Saini

(Reuters) - Robinhood Markets' suite of new products, including its credit card and futures trading platform, will be crucial to drive growth as market fluctuations and regulatory risks cloud the near-term outlook for its legacy business, analysts said.

The expanded offerings show that the 11-year old trading app, best known for its appeal among retail traders, is beginning to mature into a full-fledged financial services provider.

"Traders are searching for more sophisticated and diversified offerings post the meme-stock era and Robinhood must expand their services to keep up," said Dan Raju, CEO of brokerage platform Tradier.

Here are some graphics explaining the state of play at the Menlo Park, California-based company:

CREDIT CARD

More than 1 million customers have joined the waitlist for a credit card Robinhood launched for its Gold subscribers in March.

The card charges no annual or foreign transaction fees and offers 3% cash back, in the form of reward points, on spends. Analysts believe it is crucial to boosting subscriptions to the premium tier.

"Robinhood and other neobanks on the market are proving they can be formidable competitors in the banking industry," said Emarketer's financial services analyst Lauren Ashcraft.

RETIREMENT ACCOUNT

Robinhood offers a retirement account for customers. Eligible contributions into the account can earn a percentage match, subject to a five-year holding period.

Retirement assets under custody totaled $4.2 billion at the end of March, compared with $0.3 billion at the end of last year.

GOLD SUBSCRIPTIONS

Gold subscribers in the first quarter jumped 42% to reach a record high of 1.7 million, Robinhood said.

The Gold subscription offers customers access to several premium features - like higher match on their retirement account contributions, bigger rates of interest on their uninvested cash and cheaper margin loans.

"While the company has been successful in attracting new clients to the platform, the longer-term question of profitability remains for investors," analysts at Barclays said.

FUTURES, INDEX OPTIONS TRADING

Robinhood has said it is laser-focused on being the platform of choice for users who trade more actively and use more sophisticated products.

It is expected to launch trading in futures and index options later this year.

"We intend to make (the economics) very, very competitive, but also profitable for the company on a segment basis," CEO Vlad Tenev said.

TRANSACTION REVENUE

Robust crypto trading volumes due to the optimism stemming from the approval of the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January helped the company post a better-than-expected profit for the first quarter on Wednesday.

"Despite the strong quarter, we emphasize that it is a great environment for Robinhood and its customers and one that is probably more unusual than normal," J.P.Morgan analysts said.

Robinhood said the momentum had continued in the second quarter, though some called for caution.

"Given the natural fluctuation of its trading and crypto volume, along with some regulatory uncertainty following the Wells Notice, it's going to be hard to maintain this level of growth," Emarketer's Ashcraft said.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant and Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)