Wall Street Loses Faith in Coinbase After Earnings Miss
Wall Street didn't waste any time reacting to Coinbase's latest earnings report. After the crypto exchange posted its fourth-quarter ...
Quick overview
- Coinbase's shares dropped 8% following a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report that missed revenue and profit expectations.
- The company's revenue was $1.78 billion, falling short of the projected $1.83 billion, while profit per share was 66 cents compared to the expected dollar.
- Analysts have reacted by slashing price targets, with JPMorgan reducing theirs from $399 to $290 and Monness Crespi changing their rating from buy to sell.
- Despite some growth in subscription revenue, the significant decline in transaction revenue highlights ongoing challenges in the crypto trading market.
Wall Street didn’t waste any time reacting to Coinbase’s latest earnings report. After the crypto exchange posted its fourth-quarter results on Thursday, shares dropped 8% and analysts at several firms started slashing their price targets.
The company brought in $1.78 billion in revenue for the quarter, which came up short of the $1.83 billion that analysts were projecting. The bigger problem was profit. Coinbase earned 66 cents per share while expectations were sitting closer to a dollar. For a company that’s already lost about half its value over the last year, these misses didn’t sit well with investors.
JPMorgan took its price target down to $290 from $399. The bank still rates the stock overweight but flagged concerns about weaker trading activity and less circulation of USDC, Coinbase’s stablecoin. Monness Crespi was more brutal, flipping all the way from buy to sell. They basically said they were wrong about expecting a quick turnaround.
The real pain point was transaction revenue, which collapsed from $1.56 billion last year to $983 million this quarter. Fewer people are trading crypto right now, plain and simple. With prices staying low and the stock down over 40% in 2026 alone, there’s growing frustration among shareholders who keep waiting for things to improve.
Some parts of the business actually performed okay. Subscription revenue grew around 13% to $727 million, helped mostly by the stablecoin side of things. Institutional derivatives trading through Deribit also hung in there better than expected, even while spot trading volumes dropped off.
Brian Armstrong, the CEO, keeps pushing the company’s bigger vision about becoming an “Everything Exchange” and growing the Base blockchain network. That may all work out eventually. But right now, investors seem more interested in seeing the core business stabilize than hearing about future plans. The message from analysts is pretty clear: show us better numbers before we get excited again.
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