Coinbase shares up 14% ahead of Q4 2023 earnings report

Although analysts expect Coinbase revenue for Q4 2023 to be up 40% from Q3, this did not stop ARK Invest from dumping $33.6 million worth of COIN shares.

Shares of the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN) have surged nearly 30% over the past week in anticipation of positive news from the company’s executives, who are scheduled to report fourth-quarter financial results. As of press time, COIN is trading at $160.3, a level last seen in late December 2023, according to Google Finance.

Analysts at Messari estimate Coinbase revenue for Q4 2023 to be $866 million, growing by 40% from Q3, attributing the estimate to “Coinbase’s strong execution over the bear market.” Meanwhile, Zacks Investment Research says analysts on Wall Street project Coinbase revenues to reach $731.94 million, increasing 16.3% from the same quarter in 2022.

Despite the optimistic outlook, ARK Invest opted to sell over 214,000 COIN shares (amounting to more than $30 million) from three different funds, as per an emailed trading report. This move marks the firm’s first selling activity since January of this year.

The surge in shares coincides with two significant milestones achieved in early 2024: the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Bitcoin’s recent performance.

Regarding the former, Coinbase serves as the custodian for eight of the 11 approved Bitcoin ETFs, which has led analysts to be bullish on the exchange’s revenue prospects in the short term, as Coinbase charges 0.2% to custody assets for ETF clients.

Concerning the latter, Coinbase is included in a basket of crypto-friendly companies that tend to correlate with Bitcoin’s price performance. As previously reported by crypto.news, the positive movement of BTC has already driven up shares of many crypto miners, despite their negative production reports.