Circle Internet Group (NYSE: CRCL) was a boost for the crypto sector and for the broader market of initial public offerings. Some $1.2 billion in equity was sold by the company and by selling shareholders after pricing at $31 per share. While the stock initially opened up at $69.00, it continued its surge higher — up to nearly $300 after just 12 trading days. Now its stock is trading closer to $180.
Circle’s post-IPO quiet period has now ended and the firms in the underwriting syndicate have released their initial Buy, Sell and Hold ratings along with their price targets. It turns out that Wall Street has no agreement at all whether this stock should rise or fall looking ahead.
Circle Internet Group offers a platform, network and market infrastructure for stablecoin and blockchain applications for organizations to use and benefit from stablecoins and the internet financial system. It also issues a U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin. It claims to have the world’s largest regulated digital dollar ($USDC) and digital euro ($EURC) that are also fully backed, fast and stable for global businesses.
The current climate for cryptocurrency and digital assets has been remarkable. What was even more remarkable was that the IPO more than doubled on day-one and ended up over 400% from its opening price in the secondary market. Its market cap is now $40 billion even though only about $1.2 billion worth of stock was initially released on to the market.
Oggonomics has tracked the initial ratings and price targets (if available) from each firm in the underwriting syndicate. Some reports appear to have not been available early on Monday:
- Barclays started Circle as Overweight with a $215 price target (bookrunner).
- Canaccord Genuity started Circle as Buy with a $247 price target (co-manager).
- Citigroup started as Buy with a $243 price target (lead bookrunners).
- Compass Point started Circle as Neutral with a $205 price target.
- Deutsche Bank started Circle as Hold with a $155 price target (bookrunner).
- Goldman Sachs started Circle as Neutral with a $83 price target (lead bookrunners).
- JP Morgan started Circle as Underweight with a $80 price target (lead bookrunners).
- Needham started Circle as Buy with a $250 price target (co-manager).
- Oppenheimer started Circle as Perform with no price target mentioned (co-manager).
- Seaport Global started Circle as Buy with a $235 price target.
That pretty much sums it up, and now all the company has to do is prove itself to the financial world to be able to keep its leadership position in stablecoins. And it can also prove itself for payments, minting, wallets, contracts/tokenization and additional services.
Valuing such “hot IPOs” of this magnitude has a lot of the look and feel of the late-1999 internet-related IPOs during the “Dot-Com Bubble.” That bubble did burst, but not for every company. In fact, some of those companies and the ones that came public since are now among the world’s top companies.
As for how investors will view Circle after this run-up and settling back down, it’s going to be a mix of strategic investors, growth investors, bulls and bears. It’s too soon to include short sellers in this mix as of yet. That said, speculators and options traders have already made large bets for and against this hot IPO.
DISCLAIMERS: Please be informed that all analyst ratings and price targets mentioned above were issued by each firm named in this summary. Their ratings and targets already show significant differences. Oggonomics does not issue any formal ratings and does not maintain any price targets of its own regarding Circle Internet Group’s shares. No analyst ratings and price targets, even those with the strongest conviction or strongest pessimism, ever come with any guarantees of profits and they never contain money-back guarantees in case you lose money.
