Next week, Bullish (NYSE:BLSH) and Equiniti are due to meet issuers and capital-market leaders at the New York Stock Exchange through the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, which they launched in late September. Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth were among the first to join. Even so, the finance chief has said tokenized equities won’t add much to transaction revenue until 2027.
But the business that pays today looks different from the one on display. In the second quarter, adjusted revenue rose 62% to $92.6 million from $57.0 million a year earlier. Most of it came from a record $62.7 million in subscription, services and other revenue, though adjusted transaction revenue also grew, to $29.9 million from $24.1 million. Bullish runs an exchange where institutions trade crypto, and it owns CoinDesk. The subscription line covers CoinDesk’s event admissions, sponsorships and index data licenses, plus interest and fees from lending and liquidity services. That mix is the part of Bullish that already works, while the stock price leans on the part that doesn’t pay yet.
Finance chief Dave Bonanno called it a cross-sell engine: clients arrive through CoinDesk and its Consensus conferences, then expand into data, indices, liquidity and the exchange. Morgan Stanley launched crypto exchange-traded products built on CoinDesk’s benchmarks. Profit grew too, with adjusted EBITDA, which leaves out noncash and one-time items, reaching $29.5 million, up from $8.1 million a year earlier. Trading has also picked up since, as Bullish’s monthly figures show $48.6 billion of volume in September, against $42.5 billion in August and $30.7 billion in July. Investors who want more crypto exchange exposure can see our ranking of 7 Best Crypto Exchange Stocks to Buy Following Bitcoin’s Recovery.
Tokenization Is Still a 2027 Story
The tokenization push rests on Equiniti, a transfer agent that Bullish expects to buy in January 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. A transfer agent keeps the official record of who owns a company’s shares, and Equiniti gives Bullish a large base of issuer clients it can pitch on tokenized stock. If you’re interested in blockchain investing, we recently compiled a report on 10 Most Undervalued Blockchain Stocks to Buy Now. CEO Tom Farley told analysts in August that the issuer pipeline is filling, with real growth coming in 2027.
The strongest objection is that Bullish is paying for that future with a thin present. Its reported second-quarter net loss was $280.0 million, against adjusted net income of $14.3 million, because the adjusted figure leaves out markdowns on the crypto the company holds. Crypto prices will keep moving that gap, and the Clarity Act, a bill meant to set clear crypto rules, fell short in the Senate in September.
The SEC’s innovation exemption, which the coalition announcement cites as its backdrop, offers another route, and Farley has said the plan doesn’t depend on that bill. The objection doesn’t break the story, but it limits how fast the payoff can arrive.
The Price Assumes Tokenization Pays Off
A forward price-to-earnings ratio divides the share price by expected earnings per share, and Bullish’s is 62.85 times estimated 2026 earnings. The sector median is 10.88, so investors pay far more for each dollar of Bullish’s expected earnings than for a typical company in the sector. Bullish went public about a year ago, so there is no five-year average to show if that premium is normal.
Analysts forecast earnings per share rising 54.50% in 2026, which explains part of the premium, though those estimates are adjusted and exclude the markdowns behind the reported loss.
Hedge fund interest looks steady rather than growing, since 16 funds held the stock in the second quarter, the same number as in the first. An unchanged count suggests the group is holding positions, not adding.
Short sellers, who borrow shares and sell them hoping to buy them back cheaper, hold a bigger bet, with 15.91% of Bullish’s shares outstanding sold short. That is a wager the price will fall, which fits the doubts about timing and the multiple. For a shareholder, it means the stock can jump if next week goes well, since short sellers may have to buy shares back, and slide if it doesn’t. For investors looking at heavily shorted names, our list of 10 Stocks With High Short Interest and Improving Fundamentals is worth a look.
Next week’s meeting is more a test of demand than a source of revenue. Bullish already earns steady money from data, indices and liquidity, and the price assumes tokenization will add to it once Equiniti closes. The thing to watch is whether the issuers it meets become signed customers, since Bonanno has pointed to 2027 for transaction revenue.
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This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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