Circle IPO traders send wrong CRCL stock up 16,000%
Circle, issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin USDC, is going public this week on the New York Stock Exchange in one of the most highly anticipated IPOs of the year. When it starts trading, its ticker symbol will be CRCL.
Unfortunately, due to some confusion about the listing time, some impatient traders bought a foreign stock with the same ticker symbol, Corcel PLC.
A London-based mining company with minimal trading volume, someone bought a block of 1 million shares at 8:06am this morning at $0.34. For context, its prior trade was $0.0117.
Yahoo! Finance displayed a staggering 16,689% gain over the past five days for Corcel PLC.
Read more: Coinbase allegedly offered Circle $3B lifeline during USDC depeg
Bidding up the price of CRCL
Traders were at their desks early, searching for the latest news about Jeremy Allaire’s all-American competitor to Tether, the $153 billion offshore leader.
IPO pricing for the real CRCL on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is bidding up by the hour, with the latest update increasing Friday’s pricing range of shares from $24-26 to today’s $27-28.
Robinhood is accepting retail bids 20% higher than that range, i.e., above $33 per share. Webull and Fidelity are also allowing retail investors to place early bids at generous premiums to the IPO pricing.
If the IPO prices at $28, Circle will raise $896 million at a $7.2 billion fully diluted valuation. That includes an increased share count of 32 million — up from its original 24 million target.
JPMorgan and Citigroup are lead underwriters.
Circle (CRCL) is not yet trading on any US securities exchange, and its shares are currently scheduled to start trading on the NYSE on Thursday.
Corcel PLC is very thinly traded, often clearing only a few trades per day. Within the last 12 months, its shares have traded in an incredibly wide range from $0.0117 to $1.525.
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