CoinDesk owner Bullish shares indicated to open nearly 62% above IPO price in debut
If the stock starts to trade at the last indicated range of $55 to $60 on the NYSE, it could potentially value the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel-backed company at nearly $8.77 billion.
Bullish raised $1.11 billion in the largest U.S. listing by a digital assets company this year, marking another sign of mainstream adoption in a sector that recently topped $4 trillion in market value.
Stablecoin giant Circle had raised $1.05 billion in its initial public offering in June, before a blowout debut. As of last close, Circle shares were trading more than five times above their IPO price.
Bullish, which acquired cryptocurrency website CoinDesk in 2023, had priced the IPO at $37 per share — above an already upsized range, and was valued at $5.41 billion.
A string of regulatory wins under a pro-crypto White House, corporate treasury adoption, and ETF inflows have prompted investors to embrace the once-scorned digital asset class, driving bellwether bitcoin to record highs.
Several crypto firms, including exchange Gemini and asset manager Grayscale, are now aiming to go public during an IPO window revived by robust tech earnings, along with expectations of easing tariffs and interest rates.
J.P. Morgan and Jefferies were the lead underwriters for Bullish's IPO.
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Globe and Mail
13 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Toon Media Networks, Streaming Division of Kartoon Studios (NYSE American: TOON), Posts Dramatic Growth in Q2 2025
Kartoon Channel! Fast Views Surge 221% Year-Over-Year, Fueling Monetization Momentum Todd Steinman, President of Toon Media Networks, Consolidates Leadership over Kartoon Channel! U.S. and Worldwide Operations, now in over 60 Territories Kartoon Channel! wins Amazon's Operational Excellence Award BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Aug. 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following Kartoon Studios' (NYSE American: TOON) Q2 2025 earnings release on August 15, 2025, this announcement provides a detailed, division-level update on the outstanding performance and growth of Toon Media Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kartoon Studios, providing deeper insights beyond the broader company financial summary. Toon Media Networks, which plays a critical role within Kartoon Studios' broader family entertainment portfolio and future growth strategy, achieved significant audience growth during Q2 2025, driven primarily by its flagship streaming brand, Kartoon Channel! Toon Media Networks executed on a highly effective cross-platform strategy in Q2 2025, leveraging Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST), Ad-supported Video on Demand (AVOD), and Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) platforms to deliver exceptional engagement and audience growth. This communication highlights key consumption metrics, market expansion, and achievements that position Toon Media Networks as a fast-scaling division within Kartoon Studios. Q2 2025 Toon Media Networks Highlights: Kartoon Channel! FAST views surged 221% year-over-year (YoY) and increased 45% sequentially versus Q1 Kartoon Studios' original, Rainbow Rangers FAST views grew 80% YoY Kartoon Studios' original Stan Lee's Superhero Kindergarten watch time rose 47% YoY Kartoon Channel! on Tubi watch hours climbed 50% YoY Kartoon Channel! app user base expanded 26% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) Kartoon Channel SVOD subscriptions increased for the seventh consecutive month through July Frederator Networks' Channel Frederator YouTube revenue surged 35% QoQ Toon Media Networks now reaches viewers in over 60 territories, delivering billions of views annually across Kartoon Channel!, Kartoon Channel! Worldwide, Ameba, and Frederator. Toon Media Networks in the U.S. carried on leading platform, including YouTube, YouTube Kids, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Fire, Roku, Apple TV, iOS, Android TV, Android mobile, Xbox, Pluto TV, Xumo, Tubi, Samsung TV Plus, Google TV, Cox, DISH, Sling TV, Samsung, and LG smart TVs and more, delivering expansive multi-platform distribution and audience reach. These results reflect the division's scalable, data-driven approach to combining high quality, in-demand content with optimized audience growth, engagement, and monetization strategies across multiple digital platforms. 'Under Todd Steinman's visionary leadership, Toon Media Networks continues to demonstrate the strength of our cross-platform monetization strategy, delivering strong, scalable growth across FAST, AVOD, and SVOD that fuels expanding revenues and global audience reach,' stated Andy Heyward, Chairman & CEO of Kartoon Studios. 'This division is a key driver of strategic growth. Todd is a respected thought leader in the industry, and under his leadership, we've unified the global management of Kartoon Channel! within Toon Media Networks, bringing together Kartoon Channel! Worldwide, Kartoon Channel! Domestic, Ameba, and Frederator under a single, cohesive structure. I'm sure he will bring the same discipline and visionary strategies to the international markets as he has done here in the U.S. as the brand continues to gain recognition and becomes increasingly desirable. In the coming days, we plan to make several material announcements across multiple business segments. We are eager to share those developments, and are confident our investors will share our enthusiasm, as they highlight our ongoing commitment to delivering transformational value to and growth.' Todd Steinman, President of Toon Media Networks stated: 'Toon Media Networks is scaling across major streaming platforms around the world by combining premium content with proven strategies that drive engagement and monetization. Our global footprint is becoming increasingly optimized for profitability. We are focused on sustainable, long-term success by enhancing lives and delighting audiences through thoughtful, inspiring entertainment.' Kartoon Studios also announced that it received Amazon's Operational Excellence Award for the performance of Kartoon Channel! on Prime Video, recognizing its strong execution and results on the platform. About Toon Media Networks Through its wholly owned Toon Media Networks, including Kartoon Channel!, Kartoon Channel Worldwide, Ameba, and Frederator - Kartoon Studios reaches audiences across linear, AVOD, SVOD, and FAST platforms. Kartoon Channel! is the #1 rated kids' streaming app on the Apple App Store and delivers thousands of hours of family-friendly content, including top-performing series like Pac-Man, Mother Goose Club, Talking Tom & Friends, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and educational content through Kartoon Classroom and KC En Español. Frederator operates one of the largest global animation networks on YouTube, featuring over 2,000 creators with billions of annual views. About Kartoon Channel! Kartoon Studios' (NYSE American: TOON) Kartoon Channel! is a family entertainment destination that delivers 1,000s of episodes of carefully curated and safe family-friendly content. The channel features original content, including Stan Lee's Superhero Kindergarten, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Shaq's Garage, starring Shaquille O'Neal, as well as animated classics like PAC-MAN and the Ghostly Adventures, Super Simple Songs, and Rainbow Rangers. 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Words such as "may," "might," "will," "should," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "continue," "predict," "forecast," "project," "plan," "intend" or similar expressions, or statements regarding intent, belief, or current expectations, are forward-looking statements and include statements regarding: consumption metrics, market expansion, and achievements that position Toon Media Networks as a fast-scaling division; cross-platform monetization strategy, delivering strong, scalable growth across FAST, AVOD, and SVOD that fuels expanding revenues and global audience reach; Todd Steinman bringing his discipline and visionary strategies to the international markets; brand continuing to gain recognition and becoming increasingly desirable; Toon Media Network's global footprint becoming increasingly optimized for profitability; Toon Media Network being focused on sustainable, long-term success; and the growing global distribution footprint and a robust content pipeline positioning Kartoon Studios for sustained growth and long-term shareholder value. While the Company believes these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on any such forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to us on the date of this release. These forward looking statements are based upon current estimates and assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, Toon Media Network's ability to scale and deliver growth and profitability; Toon Media Network's ability to expand its brand globally; general economic and financial conditions; the Company's ability to anticipate changes in popular culture, media and movies, fashion and technology; competitive pressure from other distributors of content and within the retail market; the Company's reliance on and relationships with third-party production and animation studios; the Company's ability to market and advertise its products; the Company's reliance on third-parties to promote its products; the Company's ability to keep pace with technological advances; the Company's ability to protect its intellectual property and those other risk factors set forth in the 'Risk Factors' section of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 and in the Company's subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). Thus, actual results could be materially different. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
Globe and Mail
13 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
CRWV Stock Crashes Post Q2 Earnings: Stay Invested or Make an Exit?
CoreWeave, Inc. CRWV stock has declined 33.1% since reporting second-quarter 2025 earnings on Aug. 12. The company reported explosive revenue growth and impressive backlog numbers amid the AI infrastructure boom. However, investors likely got unnerved by the company's aggressive expansion strategy, high leverage and near-term profitability, leading to a sell-off. This recent slump is bound to raise an inevitable question: Is it still worth holding, or is making an exit the smarter choice? Let's unpack the company's recent results and the long-term prospects. CRWV's Q2 Earnings Snapshot Revenues in the second quarter were a record $1.2 billion, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 12.5% and jumped 207% year over year. The top-line performance was driven by demand for AI training and inference workloads, which continue to grow at breakneck speed, as businesses increasingly view AI as a strategic pivot. CoreWeave recorded a series of major achievements, securing customer wins across AI labs, hyperscalers and enterprises like Hippocratic AI, Hologen, BT Group, Cohere, LG CNS, Mistral, Moonvalley, Novel and Woven by Toyota. Highlights included a $4 billion expansion with OpenAI, adding to the previously announced $11.9 billion deal and onboarding of a new hyperscaler customer that expanded within the quarter. Partnerships with Jane Street, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs are also noteworthy. The company's market position is further reinforced by its $30.1 billion contracted backlog, up $4 billion from the first quarter and doubling year to date. Adjusted operating income was $200 million, up 134% year over year, while adjusted operating margin was 16%, down from 22%. Adjusted EBITDA was $753.2 million compared with $249.8 million in the prior-year quarter. CoreWeave also deployed NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 and HGX B200 systems at scale, integrated into its 'Mission Control' for reliability and performance. It also expanded object storage offerings with automatic tiering and launched new offerings like CoreWeave and Weights & Biases Inference service. The new inference service supports a research-friendly API for OpenAI's new open-source model, Kimi K2, Meta's Llama 4, DeepSeek and QnA3. It is investing in SUNK (Slurm on Kubernetes) for large AI labs and enterprises and is now offering support for third-party storage systems (VAST, WEKA, IBM Spectrum Scale, DDN and Pure Storage) integrated into its technology stack with large-scale production deployments. CRWV had nearly 470 megawatts (MW) of active power and contracted power of 2.2 gigawatts (GW) at the quarter-end. With over 900 MW of active power targeted by year-end, CRWV is positioning itself as a top-tier provider capable of meeting the needs of large-scale AI training and inference workloads. Key projects include a $6 billion data center investment in Lancaster, PA and another data center in Kenilworth, New Jersey, through a joint venture with Blue Owl. Management has raised 2025 revenue guidance to $5.15–$5.35 billion compared $4.9 billion to $5.1 billion projected earlier, citing accelerating demand and a robust pipeline. Why the Stock Dropped: A Look at Bearish Undercurrents CoreWeave's growth strategy heavily depends on massive capital expenditures, with the second quarter capex coming in at $2.9 billion, an increase of $1 billion from the last quarter. The full-year guidance was reaffirmed at $20-$23 billion. CRWV expects capex for the third quarter to be $2.9 billion and $3.4 billion. Higher capex can be a concern if revenues do not keep up the required pace to sustain such high capital intensity, especially in a macro environment where AI demand cycles could fluctuate due to competitive pricing and regulatory changes. CoreWeave's aggressive data center buildout is being funded in large part by debt. It has raised a staggering $25 billion in debt and equity since 2024. Interest expense surged to $267 million compared with $67 million a year ago. For the third quarter, it expects interest expenses to be between $350 million and $390 million, owing to high leverage. Higher interest expenses can exert pressure on the adjusted net income and potentially affect free cash flow generation and undermine near-term profitability. CRWV posted a net loss of $291 million and an adjusted net loss of $131 million, primarily due to heavy interest expenses. CRWV also anticipates stock-based compensation to remain slightly higher in 2025 for the grants issued pertaining to the IPO. CRWV expects adjusted operating income between $160 million and $190 million (down from $200 million in the second quarter) for the current quarter due to the ramping of capacity to meet demand. Moreover, there is intense scrutiny surrounding its C ore Scientific acquisition. Both acquisition and large data center projects entail execution and integration risks. Delays or any operational missteps could impact top and bottom-line numbers. Though it raised revenue guidance, adjusted operating income guidance remains unchanged at $800-$830 million for the year, suggesting rising costs will offset some of the revenue gains. CRWV Faces Intense Competition Moreover, CoreWeave faces tough competition in the AI cloud infrastructure space, which boasts behemoths like Amazon AMZN and Microsoft MSFT and other players like Nebius NBIS. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure cloud platform together dominate more than half of the cloud infrastructure services market, and are now aggressively moving into AI infrastructure. Microsoft's exclusive partnership with OpenAI gives Azure cloud the priority to access leading AI models like GPT-5, while AMZN is ramping up investment to build its technology infrastructure, primarily related to AWS and for custom silicon like Trainium. Nebius is another upcoming AI hyperscaler with hyper revenue growth of 625% in the last reported quarter. It plans to secure 220 megawatts of connected power (either active or ready for GPU deployment) and this also includes data centers in New Jersey and Finland. The company is also finalizing two new large-scale greenfield sites in the United States. NBIS plans to build out over 1 gigawatt of power capacity by 2026. Customer concentration is another major risk. CoreWeave's 77% of total revenues in 2024 came from the top two customers. This is a serious concern, especially if the client migrates, as the revenue impact could be material. Apart from this evolving trade policy, macro uncertainty and volatility remain additional headwinds. Given these aforementioned headwinds, there has been a downward revision for CRWV's earnings estimates in the past seven days. Lofty Valuation for CRWV Valuation-wise, CoreWeave seems overvalued, as suggested by the Value Score of F. In terms of Price/Book, CRWV shares are trading at 25.06X, way higher than the Internet Software Services industry's ratio of 7.09X, but it could mean more risk than opportunity. Conclusion: Offload CRWV Stock For now, CRWV remains a high-risk, high-reward AI infrastructure play. The company's explosive growth and robust backlog are compelling, but near-term risks are substantial. CoreWeave's heavy customer concentration and ballooning capex pose risk, especially if revenues fall short. Elevated interest expenses and continued dilution from stock-based comp add further pressure on margins. Tremendous competition from Azure, AWS and Google Cloud and stretched valuations are other concerns. With a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), investors would be better off if they offloaded CRWV from their portfolios. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. See our %%CTA_TEXT%% report – free today! 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS): Free Stock Analysis Report CoreWeave Inc. (CRWV): Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (
Globe and Mail
13 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
CoCo Bubble Tea Expands Deeper into North America with Focus on Smaller Cities
New store openings in Canada and Texas reflect CoCo's deepening market presence and robust long-term relationships with franchise partners TORONTO and LOS ANGELES , Aug. 15, 2025 /CNW/ -- Leading boba tea brand CoCo Bubble Tea today announced a series of key expansion milestones across North America , with a new focus on smaller Canadian cities and continued momentum in the U.S. market. These openings reflect the brand's sustained popularity, cultural integration, and robust support for its franchise network. "As bubble tea becomes a staple refreshment in North America , we see significant potential for growth outside of major cities," commented Kody Wong , Director of Business Development at CoCo Bubble Tea. "From Alberta to Texas , CoCo's franchise partners are bringing our brand to new communities and increasing access to authentic bubble tea for millions of North American consumers. We are immensely grateful to our partners for the passion and commitment it has taken to accomplish this." Canada : Going beyond the big cities Already a top-three brand in Toronto with over 120 stores nationwide, CoCo is now reaching new heights of market penetration: Recently opened: Lethbridge , Grand Prairie , Red Deer — bringing authentic CoCo bubble tea to new communities across Alberta . Coming soon in 2025: Saskatoon, as the brand extends its footprint deeper into the Canadian Prairie provinces. U.S. expansion driven by Texas CoCo opened its first overseas store in the United States in 2011, establishing itself as one of the pioneering new tea brands to expand globally. In 2025, CoCo has identified Texas as a key priority market in its U.S. growth strategy: Dallas : Store opened in April 2025 Upcoming franchise activities CoCo will exhibit at two upcoming major franchise expos in the region: Franchise Expo West 2025 Los Angeles Convention Center | Booth #525 September 5–6, 10AM–4PM Toronto Fall Franchise Show The International Centre | Booth #148 September 13–14, 11AM–5PM Culture and community powering success CoCo's approach to franchising is rooted in trust, support, and building long-term relationships with partners. In Canada , the same franchise partners have been with CoCo for 11 years; in New York City , partners have grown alongside the brand for 14 years — both a testament to CoCo's value-driven model and collaborative culture. To further spread pearl milk tea culture globally, the brand focuses on harnessing the popularity of the refreshment among younger consumers through social media. Also, employees and partners are referred to as " Boba Squad", a name embodying the resilience and vibrancy of the brand. In Canada , CoCo has invested heavily in synergies with local cultures. The brand has transformed fan-favorite drinks like its passionfruit series into popsicles now sold in T&T Supermarket locations across the country. In a collaboration with Barbie, CoCo brought "Strawberry Dreamer" drinks to over 100 stores across North America . This further showcases how the brand continues to innovate with purpose and reach younger audiences through pop culture. Empowering partners To support franchise partners, CoCo provides robust support tailored to its North American network, including: Dedicated logistics and supply chain for the region Local operations and consulting teams offering in-person support and business strategy Regional training programs Product R&D and adaptation for local tastes A single-store program that empowers individual entrepreneurs to build community-driven success stories For franchise inquiries in North America , visit: About CoCo Bubble Tea CoCo Bubble Tea aims to create a diverse and sustainable community for its consumers by providing visually refreshing products. We continue to be one of the fastest-growing companies and are looking for enterprising partners to join the CoCo Bubble Tea franchise networks. Check CoCo Bubble Tea's official website and start your application now. For more information, please visit
