| Hi all, it's Annie from Bloomberg's investing team. Robinhood Markets Inc. will make its public market debut on Thursday. The company's shares are priced at $38, on the low end of the range it was targeting, putting its valuation at about $32 billion. The initial public offering will make its founders and investors significantly richer, and—if all goes according to plan—some of its customers will benefit too. Robinhood is setting aside as much as 35% of shares for Robinhood traders, creating what it believes will be one of the largest-ever retail allocations in an IPO. Typically, buying shares of a company before it debuts is the domain of big institutional investors and hedge funds with deep pockets. But Robinhood says that by encouraging its own investors to get involved, it's further opening up the walled-off world of finance to the everyday trader. The road to this point has been bumpy for Robinhood. The company acknowledged as much during its investor roadshow, which was live-streamed for anyone to watch—another unorthodox decision. During the presentation, co-founder Baiju Bhatt said executives haven't always done everything perfectly. The company is trying to rebuild trust after the GameStop Corp. saga where its users helped fuel a run-up in the company's share price, and then limited trading. And it's still working to prove to regulators that the company is able to manage its growing throng of users. At the end of June, Robinhood had about 22.5 million funded accounts, more than double the level from the same period a year ago. The company is still facing a bevy of legal and regulatory hurdles. Just this week, Robinhood revealed in a filing that the Finanical Industry Regulatory Authority is examining the fact that Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev and Chief Creative Officer Bhatt aren't registered with the agency. That's on top of another request from a division of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Finra that also asked for information about Robinhood employees trading shares ahead of the company's crackdown on meme stock purchases in late January. Robinhood says it's cooperating, and no accusations of wrongdoing have yet been leveled. On Thursday, much like its path to the public markets, Robinhood's IPO itself will be unpredictable. Some wonder whether the company that enabled meme stock trading could itself trade like a meme stock, thanks to its own users. Robinhood warned investors in a filing ahead of the offering that its unconventionally high retail allocation could lead to volatility in the shares. Going forward, Robinhood executives said that the company is working on offering more than trading services. It's enhancing its crypto functions, including with virtual currency wallets. And it would be open to offering retirement products like IRAs, Tenev said during the roadshow. Of course, that's not all. My colleague Mark Gurman and I also wrote about a few other features that may be in the pipeline, according to code hidden in a test version of Robinhood's iPhone app. These include a function to let users invest spare change, and an additional feature to help safeguard portfolios against volatility in virtual currency markets. Robinhood already transformed the brokerage industry by popularizing free trading. Judging from the company's slate of new projects and unconventional IPO plans, its efforts to change finance aren't done yet. —Annie Massa Companies' return-to-office planning has been derailed by the surge in coronavirus cases. Lyft said it wouldn't ask employees to come back until February of next year—pushing its return plans back six months. Google and Apple have also delayed return dates, and many companies are now requiring employees to be vaccinated. Language learning app Duolingo rose 36% after it went public in an IPO priced above its marketed range. Wednesday was another big day for earnings. Shares of PayPal dropped 8.5% after the company reported second-quarter revenue that fell short of analyst estimates. Facebook sounded a cautious note on revenue future revenue thanks to ad targeting changes, sending the shares down as much as 5.2% in extended trading. Activision Blizzard employees staged a walkout over the company's handling of a sexual harassment suit, while fans called for a boycott of the company. | 
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