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Transcript

RETAIL Investors Are Now Wall Street’s ELITE · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When we first met, it was just before the idea
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: of the meme stock, which obviously your platform got a
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: lot of flat four and it was all the retail
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: traders don't know what they're doing. And then we saw
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you speak and we met again, and was the idea
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of like, the retail trader is the sophisticated trader. Yeah,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: talk about the role and how that's transpired over the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: past two or three years to now that everybody's in
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: on it. Like way, the retail is where we can
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: get a lot of our customer based from because they
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: have the tools.
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  Speaker 2: I think companies are waking up to this. You know,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: we were relatively early to embrace the retail trader because
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the retail trader is our customer. So of course we
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: have a natural incentive as a company to have our
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: customers be shareholders, right because not only are they our shareholders,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: but they're people that use the product every day. You know,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: our product is a stock market investing product at its core.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that I'm very proud of
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: is the work that we've done on IPO access. I
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: mentioned you guys a little earlier. It is my second
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: trip to New York this week, first time. I was
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday at a
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: round table called make IPOs Great Again. It's funny name.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: They had the red hats too, which, by the way,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: the idea that the administration and the regulators are coming
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: to Robinhood as a representative of the retail investor to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: collect feedback for how to make capital markets and IPOs
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: better was something that probably I wouldn't have imagined the
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: first time we met in twenty twenty two, so pretty
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: crazy how quickly things can change. But when we went
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: public in twenty one, we rolled out this product called
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: IPO Access, and the idea was not just have IPOs
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: be for the chosen few, the elites, the high net worth,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the private wealth folks, and obviously the institutions, but how
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: do we plug Robinhood investors directly into IPOs and get
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: them allocations at the same price on a level playing
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: field with the institutions. And so our IPO at the
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  Speaker 2: time was I think the largest IPO retail allocation for
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  Speaker 2: an IPO of its size, and we tried to get
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: other companies on board. We got some, but they were
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: very skeptical and reluctant, you know, some people actually, to
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: be fair, really bought into it. But most companies we
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: had to ask for favors, and you know, they would
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  Speaker 2: throw us a few scraps, like we'll give you half
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  Speaker 2: a percent of the IPO allocation. So we really asked
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: for favors and people didn't really get it. They're like,
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  Speaker 2: what's the point. I'm just trying to take my company public,
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  Speaker 2: go through the process, get it over with so I
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: can get back to running my business. They didn't really
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: see the point. And fast forward to twenty twenty five
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: this year, when the IPOs have come back, every company
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: of consequence has basically come to us and asked, let's
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: talk about our retail strategy. How do we get retail
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: more engaged. And you've started to see the CEOs of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: those companies when they're doing their press about the IPO,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: talking about how retail's big constituency and saying, you know,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: in the case of Bullish CEO, we give retail twenty
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: percent allocation. It's one of the largest retail allocations ever.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Gemini CEO, the winklevost Wins gave a huge retail allocation,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, now it's completely shifted where retail is
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: definitely being a first class citizen. So what we're trying
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: to do is push that forward, go deeper into IPOs
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: and continue the leadership we have there. Post IPO. We
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: want to make the brand of being a public company
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  Speaker 2: a little bit better. I don't know if you guys have.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, some
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: of whom are public. Generally, the perception and the way
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: they talk about being public is negative. We have to
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: be public, but I hate earnings calls. I hate this.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I hate that it's a chore. And what I'm trying
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: to do is shift it into being a positive thing.
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  Speaker 2: So rather than thinking of your earnings calls as a chore,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: how can they become fun? Can you as the executive
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: have fun during earnings and also can the audience actually
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: enjoy watching it? So we've been investing a lot in
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: actually making our earnings calls not just informative, but entertaining.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So for the last one, we did it at the
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Chase Center, home of the World State Warriors, and we
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: not only had the cell side analysts, who's the typical
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: earnings audience, but we had buyside investors. We also had
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: the media, So the media was at our earnings calls
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  Speaker 2: and everyone could ask questions on a level playing field.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: We had retail investors via Zoom asking questions, and then
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  Speaker 2: of course the whole thing was televised, so it was
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  Speaker 2: on live stream on social media. And you go back
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: a year ago, our earnings calls were on a polycom
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  Speaker 2: audio only. We had maybe like hundreds of people listening,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: and now it's gone to tens of thousands, so orders
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: of magnitude increase in the audience for earnings. And now
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  Speaker 2: we're starting to actually export this as a product to
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: other public companies. So open Door, for example, they saw
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: what we were doing. They said, we want to engage retail.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: We want retail to be our number one constituency. So
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: we work with them to live stream their earnings to
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: our audience in the Robinhood app. And we've heard from
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: many people that, you know, they'd like to start doing this.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: So I think you'll see earnings calls becoming fun and
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I think the brand of being a public company start
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: to shift into a more positive thing. And also on
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the other side of the spectrum, before a company is
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: going public, when they're still private, we're hard at work
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: trying to get retail exposure on the private side and
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: making that a little bit easier. We have a great
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: initiative called Robinhood Ventures, which is going to be in
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: the US, and we're launching a closed then fund that's
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: on file with the SEC right now, so we're actually
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  Speaker 2: in the quiet period. I can't talk much about it,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: but the ideas make it so that retail investors can
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: invest in the best private companies before they go public,
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  Speaker 2: So we're kind of tackling it across every part of
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: the spectrum.