Coinbase and Others Enter the NFT Space and Gitlab Raises Over $800 Million in IPO

It’s been a news field week this week.

JP Morgan (JPM) and Blackrock (BLK) Kick Off Earnings With a Bang

Blackrock reported an increase in Assets Under Management of $1.65 trillion year over year. This increase in AUM helped drive an increase in fee income. Blackrock reported fee income of $1.69 billion or $10.95 a share for the quarter ended September 30th. Following the earnings announcement, shares were up 3.8% on Wednesday.

JP Morgan reported a beat on earnings as well, beating analysts’ estimates and reporting earnings of $3.74 a share, compared to estimates of $3.00 a share. Despite this, the stock was down on Wednesday as it traded down with most banks. Shares of JP Morgan were down 2.64% on Wednesday and the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index was down .77% on Wednesday.

Source: Refinitiv 10/13/2021

The NFT Space Heats Up Again

On Tuesday, Coinbase (COIN) announced that it has plans to start a peer to peer NFT marketplace on its platform. In less than a day after announcing this project, Coinbase reportedly had over a million signups on the Coinbase NFT waitlist. Following the announcement, Needham increased their price target to $420 a share on COIN and analyst John Todaro stated, “Given COIN’s crypto native audience and retail user engagement, we believe an NFT marketplace will expand revenue opportunities for the company and increase ‘stickiness’ for the platform as it broadens services in the ecosystem.” 1

Visa recently purchased a NFT2 and Twitter announced it is exploring a way to support NFT authentication. This feature would allow a user to link their wallet to their twitter profile and allow anyone to view your NFT collection3 We also had announcements this week that Fox would be launching Maskverse, an NFT collection, game, thing that ties into The Masked Singer.4 Glenfiddich will release a rare whisky NFT,5 Rob Gronkowski will team up with Tom Brady’s NFT company - Autograph6 and Viacom also announced NFTs based on their IP.7  

*The author has a financial interest in the subject above.

1. Source: Yahoo!Finance, 10/13/2021

2. Source: CNBC, 8/23/2021

3. Source: TechCrunch 9/23/2021

4. Source: The Verge, 10/13/2021

5. Source: Hypebeast, 10/13/2021

6. Source: NFTevening 10/12/2021

7. Source: TechCrunch 10/13/2021

Gitlab (GTLB) Raises Over $800 Million in IPO

Gitlab priced 10.4 million shares at $77 a piece on Wednesday night. On its first day of trading, Gitlab traded up 34.92 % on volume of 8,475,088 shares. Gitlab is a software development platform whose customers include Goldman Sachs, Ticketmaster, Nvidia, Siemens AG and ZipRecruiter.

According to the prospectus, “The principal purposes of this offering are to create a public market for our Class A common stock, increase our visibility in the marketplace, obtain additional capital, facilitate future acquisitions and partnerships, and increase our capitalization and financial flexibility.”

Gitlab is a 100% remote company with team members in over 65 countries. The company published The Remote Manifesto, a must-read for anyone working from home.

Source: Bloomberg 10/13/2021

Apple (AAPL) to Cut iPhone 13 Production Guidance

Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that Apple is likely to slash iPhone 13 production guidance by 10 million units in 2021. Apple has largely escaped many of the supply chain bottlenecks that many companies have had to deal with the past 18 months. However, it appears that this trend is coming to an end. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is expected to produce 10 million less iPhone 13s this year due to shortages in components from Broadcom (AVGO) and Texas Instruments (TXN).

Neil Campling, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities was quoted, “If this is happening to the most powerful company, it could happen to anyone. They have huge power in terms of their ability to source semiconductors as such a key customer, then everyone else will be having greater issues than they are.”

Source: Bloomberg 10/12/2021

US to Open Land Mexico and Canada Land Borders

In extremely positive news, land borders the United States shares with Mexico and Canada will re-open next month for vaccinated travelers. Hopefully this is a sign that the end of the pandemic could be within sight.

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand stated, “This reopening will be welcome news to countless businesses, medical providers, families, and loved ones that depend on travel across the northern border.”

The change for non essential travel is expected to kick start industries like tourism and gambling.  

Source: Bloomberg 10/12/2021

About the Writer

My name is Allen Spence and I have been working in the retail brokerage industry for over 16 years.  I joined Alpaca in March of 2021 as a Brokerage Operations Consultant. Before joining Alpaca I have worked in a retail branch environment, call center for active traders, and spent over seven and a half years as the team lead on an equity trading desk for a large regional broker dealer.  I’m excited to be at Alpaca helping bring the markets to investors worldwide. I live in Florida and enjoy traveling and spending time with my family.

About Alpaca

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