By Nate Wolf

The fintech company Chime Financial filed to go public on Tuesday in a move that will test the strength of the initial public offering market after a yearslong slump.

Barring any snags, Chime will trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the "CHYM" ticker symbol. The number of shares and expected price range are yet to be determined, the company said.

The fintech industry has been a center of IPO activity over the last few months. Chime will follow eToro, a stock and crypto trading platform that will begin trading on Nasdaq on Wednesday. EToro's shares were priced at $52, above the initial expected range of $46 to $50.

Buy now, pay later lender Klarna, meanwhile, filed to go public in March, before suspending its plans the next month after President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

Chime, which offers banking services through partners The Bancorp and Stride Bank, reported revenue of $1.7 billion in 2024, up from $1.3 billion the prior year. While the fintech has never posted a full-year profit, it did report net income of $13 million in the first quarter of 2025, according to Wednesday's filings.

Those numbers make Chime an intriguing test case for investors, who have watched the IPO market dry up in the last few years and have seen some companies stumble after going public.

"Chime seems likely to be the first big global deal to test the market," said Samuel Kerr, head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket. "Inherently that is more challenging given the quantum of demand required get bigger IPOs to market."

The IPO boom peaked when 311 companies went public in 2021, according to data from Jay Ritter of the University of Florida Warrington College of Business. Amid elevated interest rates and economic uncertainty, just 164 companies listed from 2022 to 2024, the weakest three-year span since the Great Recession.

While the Chime deal may provide optimism for investment bankers seeking a stronger IPO market, Kerr said public offerings largely have disappointed so far in 2025, which may limit Chime's ability to set an aggressive valuation.

"The feedback we are getting from banks and investors is we are still broadly in a buyers' market," Kerr added.

Arguably the highest-profile IPO of 2025 was CoreWeave, the cloud processing company and Nvidia partner that was priced at $40 a share and went public in late March. The stock has swung wildly since then, but shares now trade at $64.62, up more than 60% from their offer price.

CoreWeave reports quarterly earnings for the first time as a public company after markets close Wednesday.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com

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May 14, 2025 11:15 ET (15:15 GMT)

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