A little more than a year ago, BlackBoxStocks CEO Gust Kepler told NTX Inno the company’s growth amid the pandemic was propelling on a path toward the Nasdaq. Now, the company is making its play.
The Dallas-based stock analytics and social media SaaS platform has filed to go public on the market, seeking to raise up to $20 million and looking to trade under the ticker BLBX. Pricing terms were not disclosed.
“The global COVID-19 pandemic created a unique environment for online companies,” BlackBoxStocks wrote in its SEC filing. “The financial stimulus, coupled with a large portion of the population confined to their homes, created a freshly-financed captive audience for trading tools like ours. Although our initial 2020 growth trajectory began before the pandemic and resulting lockdowns, the COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to greatly increase our audience and grow our user base on a global level.”
BlackBoxStocks currently trades on the OTC Pink market under the same ticker symbol. At their last reported price on Oct. 4, the company’s stocks were trading at $7.01 per share.
New York firm Alexander Capital is the sole bookrunner.
While the company, met financial requirements to be defined as an “emerging growth company,” meaning it has reduced reporting requirements, BlackBoxStocks’ S-1 filing provides some insights into the company's growth. In 2020, BlackBoxStocks' revenue totaled around $3.37 million, up from the $1.06 million in revenue it saw in 2019, nearly all of which came from subscriptions. And for the six months ending in June of this year, BlackBoxStocks reported $2.95 million in revenue, something the company attributes to its growing subscriber base.
Since forming in 2014, BlackBoxStocks says it has users in 42 countries. Last September, Kepler said the company had about 4,200 users on its platform and was expecting to have up to 20,000 by 2022. The company’s stock and options scanning platform uses predictive AI, scanning markets in real-time while sending alerts and other analytical data based on the individual user.
“Our goal is to provide retail investors with the type of sophisticated trading tools that were previously available only to large institutional hedge funds and high-frequency traders, together with an interactive community of traders and investors of all levels,” the company wrote.
The company has eight full-time employees. Upon completion of the offering, Kepler will retain more than 50% of board member election voting power, meaning it will be a “controlled company” under Nasdaq’s corporate governance standards. He currently owns 22.6% of BlackBoxStocks’ issued and outstanding common stock and 100% of the Series A Convertible Preferred Stock.
BlackBoxStocks said its planning to release fully-functional iOS and Android apps this month and is currently developing a cryptocurrency trading platform. To further its growth, the company said it plans to release more products and services while expanding its analytics tools to other international markets in the future.
“These products and services will include applications targeted for investors who are not day traders or swing traders, and products designed for professional traders,” BlackBoxStocks wrote. “We expect to introduce these products and services in the first or second quarter of 2022, and spend significant capital on advertising and marketing of the products and services.”
This article has been updated to show BlackBoxStocks was launched in 2014, not 2011.
