By Manya Saini and Niket Nishant<\/p>\n
(Reuters) -Trading platform Robinhood Markets is open to potential acquisitions in the fast-growing prediction markets space, a top executive told Reuters in an interview on Monday, as interest in the once-niche asset class surges globally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe as a firm are going to be looking to see if there is an acquisition that\u2019s available,\u201d said JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat being said, what we also know is we have really good engineers that build great products here. So what we\u2019re going to do is try to balance the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prediction markets saw a surge in popularity during last year\u2019s U.S. presidential election and have since evolved into an asset class that lets investors wager on everything from monetary policy to major sports tournaments.<\/p>\n
Those wagers are placed through event contracts. Each contract represents a specific outcome that pays out if it occurs or expires worthless if it does not.<\/p>\n
The sector\u2019s growth has also drawn startups such as Underdog, which launched event contracts in September, allowing customers to profit from their views on sporting leagues.<\/p>\n
NYSE-owner Intercontinental Exchange took a $2 billion stake in Polymarket last week, underscoring the heating competition in the space.<\/p>\n
Robinhood launched its hub for trading event contracts in March, in partnership with prediction marketplace Kalshi, which was valued at $5 billion in its last funding round. It has also partnered with Interactive Brokers Group\u2019s ForecastEx.<\/p>\n
Brokerage Piper Sandler estimated that revenues from Robinhood\u2019s event contract offering were annualizing at over $200 million in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe estimate that Robinhood users account for about 25%-35% of Kalshi volumes on any given day,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
Robinhood will also consider other avenues for growth, including a joint venture or a partnership instead of an outright acquisition, Mackenzie said.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s shares have climbed 273% so far this year, through the previous close, lifting its market value to more than $123 billion and earning it a spot in the benchmark S&P 500 index.<\/p>\n
The company has rapidly broadened its offerings and diversified its customer base in a bid to evolve from a retail trading platform into a full-fledged financial services firm.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Manya Saini and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Manya Saini and Niket Nishant (Reuters) -Trading platform Robinhood Markets is open to potential acquisitions in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,220,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-76181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-business","tag-markets","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}