Robinhood Stock Once Fell 82% Below Its IPO Price. $10,000 Invested at the IPO Has Still More Than Tripled.

Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ:HOOD) went public on July 29, 2021, at $38 a share. Ten thousand dollars at that price bought around 263 shares. At about $119 as I write this, they're worth about $31,300.

That's a gain of more than 200%, far above what the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) returned during the same stretch.

But getting there took plenty of patience. The stock spent most of its first year as a public company dropping. And I'd say the business an IPO buyer owns now makes its money in very different ways from the one that went public.

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A round trip through $6.89

Robinhood's shares ended their first trading day at $34.82, already under the IPO price. Then they soared, closing at around $70 on Aug. 4, 2021, less than a week into trading. Briefly, the $10,000 stake was worth over $18,000.

That didn't last. Shares finished 2021 under $18.

And on June 16, 2022, the stock closed at $6.89 -- 82% below the IPO price. By then, the original $10,000 was worth about $1,800.

The rebound took years. Shares finished 2024 near $37, and Robinhood joined the S&P 500 on Sept. 22, 2025. On Oct. 9, 2025, the stock reached a record close of $152.46, which would have made the IPO stake worth about $40,100. Shares have since fallen about 22% from that high.

The 2021 business relied on crypto

Robinhood's first earnings report as a public company showed how much it depended on a trading frenzy. Second-quarter 2021 revenue more than doubled, climbing 131% year over year to $565 million. Yet crypto trading made up 41% of the revenue, and 62% of the crypto revenue came from one coin, Dogecoin, according to the company's quarterly filing.

Revenue like that can vanish fast, and it did.

Robinhood's revenue slid 25% in 2022 to $1.36 billion, and monthly active users dropped from 21.3 million in June 2021 to 11.4 million at the end of 2022. The company cut around 23% of its full-time staff in August 2022, and it lost $1.03 billion that year.

Robinhood makes money in more ways now

Second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 32% year over year to $1.31 billion, more than double the same quarter in 2021. Crypto supplied under 8% of it. Net interest revenue, earned mostly on margin loans and customers' cash, rose to $389 million from $68 million five years before. Event contracts, the company's prediction-market product, added $156 million.

What's more, Robinhood Gold, the company's paid subscription, hit a record 4.8 million subscribers, up 39% year over year. That sort of recurring revenue might make results less reliant on the next trading frenzy.

Showing how far the rebuild has come, annual revenue bottomed at $1.36 billion in 2022 and has risen every year since, reaching $4.5 billion in 2025. Growth hit 58% in 2024 and cooled just a bit last year, to 52%. And the bottom line followed. A $1.03 billion net loss in 2022 dropped to a $541 million loss in 2023, then turned to net income of $1.41 billion in 2024 (helped by a one-time tax benefit) and $1.9 billion in 2025.

The quarterly earnings comparison is even more lopsided. Robinhood's $502 million net loss in the second quarter of 2021 included $528 million in charges linked to the changing value of convertible notes and warrants, so the underlying business was near break-even. This year, Robinhood's second-quarter net income was $573 million, a 48% increase, but $129 million of that was from one-time gains.

Of course, growth hasn't been steady in 2026. First-quarter revenue rose just 15% year over year, so the second quarter's 32% was a sharp acceleration.

Is it too late to buy?

The market now values Robinhood at around $107 billion. At the IPO price, the company was worth about $32 billion. And using expected 2027 earnings, the stock's price-to-earnings ratio is around 41 -- a premium price even for a business growing this quickly.

Put simply, the IPO investor's gain came from owning a business that shrank in 2022 and then rebuilt itself into something broader and profitable. A buyer now gets that improved business at a much higher price.

For investors who bought at the IPO and held on, I think the case for keeping the shares is sound because the company is far stronger than the one they bought. But for new money, I think most of the improvement is already priced in.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.