Coinbase logo displayed on a smartphone screen. With Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

Coinbase Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN) reported its third-quarter financial results and held its earnings call on Thursday evening.

Below are the transcripts from the Q3 earnings call.

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Anil Gupta (Vice President of Investor Relations)

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

Thanks. So let’s begin with pre submitted questions from retail shareholders. Many of the top questions touch on similar topics. So for efficiency we’ll group by theme. The first topic is about competition. What’s the plan to improve product innovation and velocity and increase market share? How are you thinking about listing stocks and prediction markets given the success of others. Brian?

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

OPERATOR

Thanks Brian. So the second topic is base. Brian, can you elaborate on how you’re thinking about a base network token and in particular how shareholders could be beneficiaries of the distribution. And Alicia, can you talk about the monetization of the base network and how that might evolve over time?

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

All right, thank you both. So we’ll now take questions from the research analysts. To ask a question, press star one and each participant will be limited to one question. Our first question comes from Craig Siegenthaler at Bank of America.

Bank of America Equity Analyst

Good evening everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Our question is on Echo. So how will Echo help expand your network? By making it more easy for crypto companies to raise and invest via private sales or public sales with the platform.

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Emilie Choi (President and COO)

OPERATOR

Let’s take our next question from ken Worthington at JPMorgan.

JPMorgan Analyst

Emilie Choi (President and COO)

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, I just say you’re right. The pace has picked up. The political Environment definitely helps with that. And all of this M and A is really in service of our core focus around trading and payments. So it’s been great.

OPERATOR

Our next question is from Pete Christensen at Citi.

Citi Equity Analyst

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Alesia Haas (CFO)

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

OPERATOR

Next question is from Ben Butish at Barclays.

Barclays Analyst

Alesia Haas (CFO)

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, not much to add. I would just say that in, in trading, I mean there are whales that are out there that drive a disproportionate amount of volume. And so it’s important for them to have a dedicated relationship manager that can help them resolve any issue. But also it has partially a sales function. So I think it’s just a good example of us maturing as a company and recording the best customers.

OPERATOR

Let’s go now to Owen Lau from Clear Street.

Equity Analyst

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

Let’s go next to Devin Ryan at Citizens.

Citizens Equity Analyst

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

We’ll take our next question from Patrick Moley at Piper Sandler.

Piper Sandler Analyst

Good evening. Thanks for taking the question. I just had one on the everything exchange. I was wondering if you could update us on the timeline or some of the milestones we should be looking out for as you introduce new asset classes to that platform. Thanks.

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, well, some of them are already live. Right. I mentioned the dex integration, the US style perps and December 17th is going to be another milestone for us. We’re hosting that H2 product event where we’ll be giving an update on everything we’ve been working on in the second half of this year. So. So that’ll be a good one to tune into on the live stream.

OPERATOR

Let’s go next to James Yarrow from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs Equity Analyst

Good afternoon and thanks for taking the question. Could you help us think through the impacts of the crypto liquidations on October 10th on markets as well as on the various market participants? Do you see any medium term ramifications and are there any lessons learned that you think could improve market market function going forward?

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

We’ll take our next question from Andrew Jeffrey at William Blair.

William Blair Equity Analyst

I appreciate the question, Brian. I definitely agree with your vision on stablecoins. I wonder if you can sort of dimensionalize for us sort of timing in your mind for more commercial adoption outside of crypto and the role you think coinbase plays in that, you know, cross border commerce and whether or not it changes with. Whether or not your economics change with, with volume as USDC takes off.

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Our next question comes from Bo Pei at US Tiger.

Equity Analyst

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. In the shareholders letter you mentioned scaling battery base and incentives in derivative. Could you quantify how that’s affecting take rate and whether you expect this to help margin expansion in Q4 and 2026?

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

Our next question is from Alex Marcgraf at Keybanc Capital Market

Keybanc Equity Analyst

Hey everyone, thanks for taking my question. Alicia, maybe one for you. Just as we think about the many new products and elements of the Coinbase platform, just hoping we could just sort of step back and maybe you could remind us how you’re thinking about managing margins across these various products and platform elements. Any way to sort of frame the vision for contribution margin across these newer items?

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

We’Ll take our next question from Dan Dolev at Mizuho.

Mizuho Equity Analyst

Hey guys, great results here. I got. I guess two quick questions on the take rates. I appreciate you answering the institutional take rates. Is there any way you can help us think about sort of how this looks a couple quarters out and then I have a very, very quick follow up if you don’t mind.

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

We’ll go now to Ed Engel from Compass Point.

Equity Analyst

Alesia Haas (CFO)

Great question. So as we shared in my opening comments, the outlook for Q4 on our tech and dev and GNA combined is up up roughly 100 million quarter over quarter. About half of that step up in cost is due to the two acquisitions we made, one being Daribit, the second being Echo, and then the other half is due to headcount growth. So we are still growing headcount in the fourth quarter, although at a much slower rate than we did in the third quarter.

OPERATOR

Let’s go now to Zach Gunn at FT Partners.

Equity Analyst

Hey there. Thanks for taking my question. I just also wanted to ask on the payment side of things. Historically when we think about driving adoption of a new payment modality or platform, it takes anywhere from 3 to 5% of overall transaction value to incentivize either consumer or merchant or business switching. So can you just talk about what Coinbase is doing to incentivize adoption of its payments platform? Thanks.

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

OPERATOR

All payments go next to Joseph Vafi from Canaccord.

Canaccord Analyst

Alesia Haas (CFO)

OPERATOR

We’ll take our final question from Gus Gala at Monash, Crespi and Hart.

Equity Analyst

Alesia Haas (CFO)

Brian Armstrong (Co-Founder and CEO)

Yeah, I hope we answered your question on that. I was a little distracted because I was tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call and I just want to, you know, add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain staking and web3 to make sure we get those in before the end of the call.

OPERATOR

All right. Well we’ve taken all of our questions. That’s it for today. Thanks for joining us and we’ll talk to you again next quarter. Before we end, I just want to invite anybody to join us on our X Spaces call next week and so please follow us on X and Brian and I will be taking additional questions on Monday.

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