Barclays Leads Seven Bank Cuts on Coinbase (COIN) With $120 Target

Seven Firms Trim Their Targets

Seven Wall Street firms cut their price targets for Coinbase Global (COIN) on Friday after the company disclosed a weak start to the fourth quarter. Barclays went lowest, dropping its target to $120 from $149, which puts it 25% below Thursday's close of $160.59. Wells Fargo moved to $174 from $200, Jefferies to $174 from $183, Compass Point to $165 from $187, Needham to $197 from $205, Canaccord to $275 from $300, and Mizuho to $145 from $155. A price target is an analyst's 12-month estimate of where a stock should trade. The trigger came on Thursday's earnings call, when Chief Financial Officer Alesia Haas said transaction revenue through October 25 stood at approximately $165 million, per the company's published call transcript. Trading fees made up nearly half of the $1.22 billion in third-quarter revenue, so a slower October pace feeds directly into the estimates behind those targets. The quarterly filing with the SEC shows third-quarter transaction revenue was already down 44% year on year. The revisions reflect a market where spot trading activity has cooled, since Coinbase earns most of its revenue from fees charged on each trade. Mizuho projects about $607 million in fourth-quarter transaction revenue, slightly above Q3's $590 million but 11% under the $684 million analysts carried before the results, and flagged retail order flow drifting toward Robinhood. Jefferies cited the expense outlook for its cut. Even after the reductions, the average target across 30 covering analysts stood at $207.61, with 19 buy ratings against two sells and a floor of $100. In pre-market trading the stock fell 6% to $150.75 before the opening bell.

COINOTAG data shows the selling carried through Friday's session: Coinbase stock last traded at $145.40, down 4.03% on the day, within a $137.37 to $155.54 range. The composite scoring rates the $136.53 support, just below the session low, at 82/100, while the nearest resistance at $146.78 also scores 82/100, leaving price pinned between two strong levels. Daily indicators read bearish, with the RSI at 28.1 and a confirmed downtrend, and perpetual open interest stands near $26.1 million.

Paper Gains Carried Q3 Profit

The quarter behind the cuts showed how heavily Coinbase's profit line leans on token prices. Net income reached $718.7 million, but a $715 million unrealized crypto gain drove most of it, while operating income fell to $61.7 million from $480.5 million a year earlier. Shareholders, already down 51% over the past year, received those results one day before the target cuts landed. Management also lowered its 2026 adjusted expense guidance to $4.15 billion to $4.3 billion, a step Mizuho called positive, and Haas noted that trading conditions improved during September. October's slow start has undershot before: in July the company reported about $130 million in transaction revenue through July 26, per its Q2 earnings deck filed with regulators, and the third quarter still closed at $590 million. Diversification lines expanded in the quarter. Prediction markets, where users trade contracts on event outcomes, passed $200 million in annualized revenue, and average holdings of USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin, reached a record $22 billion on the platform. The results also arrived in a rough week for the sector: crypto stocks slid after a $6.3 billion Binance hack, a figure the exchange itself reported, with withdrawals set to resume within 48 hours. A further overhang sits ahead. CEO Brian Armstrong adopted a 10b5-1 plan to sell up to 8.17 million shares, roughly $1.31 billion, through October 2027, while co-founder Fred Ehrsam and President Emilie Choi entered plans for 3.87 million and 1.56 million shares. The pre-set sales can begin November 16, covering up to 13.6 million shares in total.

The gap between a $718.7 million headline profit and a $61.7 million operating result explains the speed of Friday's revisions: analysts value the fee engine, not mark-to-market gains. The $165 million October figure mirrors the July pattern, when a slow first month still ended in a $590 million quarter, which argues the cuts may be early rather than wrong. The offsets are real but still small, with prediction-market revenue past $200 million annualized and record USDC balances of $22 billion depending far less on trading volume than the transaction business. The next test is supply: from November 16, the 13.6 million-share insider programs can start selling into a market that has repriced the stock twice this week.