Armada II (XRPN) jumps 61% as it joins Robinhood's Trending list, with about 80% of its SPAC shares already cashed out
What retail investors are buying on Friday: the XRP treasury SPAC, Synaptics and onsemi are new to the Trending list. XRPN trades at $37.74, against a $10.00 price for the investors funding the deal.
Armada Acquisition Corp. II, the blank-check company that is about to become the XRP treasury company Evernorth, is the standout among the names that are new on Robinhood's Trending list this morning. It is also where the gap between popularity and the numbers is widest. The stock, ticker XRPN, traded at $37.74 at 12:10 p.m. Eastern, up 61% on the day and about 259% since it closed at $10.53 on Sept. 2, according to Nasdaq. Over the same day XRP itself was up 1.6% on Coinbase, to $1.505.
Fifteen names entered Robinhood's Trending list since Thursday afternoon's snapshot. Besides XRPN, they include Synaptics, onsemi, Nike, McDonald's, Micron, Strategy (MSTR), MARA Holdings, American Airlines and Boeing.
What actually happened at Armada II
Shareholders approved the merger with Evernorth on Sept. 30, the company reported in an 8-K filed with the SEC, by 20,514,034 votes to 1,362,081. In a release on Oct. 1, the companies said the deal is expected to close on Oct. 7. Evernorth's stock would then trade on Nasdaq as XRPN from Oct. 8, holding about 473 million XRP. At Friday's XRP price that much XRP is worth about $712 million.
The number behind the number: a float that mostly walked away
The release says the deal brings in "approximately $48 million of trust proceeds." That figure tells you how many SPAC holders stayed in. The proxy statement put the trust at $241.2 million on June 30, about 23 million public shares at $10.49 each, and valued it at about $10.52 a share by Aug. 20. At that price, $48 million covers roughly 4.6 million shares. By our arithmetic, about 80% of public holders took their cash back instead of staying for the merger.
That matters for the price. Nasdaq showed about 3.6 million XRPN shares traded by midday, close to our estimate of the entire public float that stayed in. When few shares are available and attention arrives through a list like Trending, the price is set by a small pool of shares changing hands. Friday's range ran from $27.00 to $40.00.
The other side of the deal was priced very differently. The proxy says investors committed more than $1 billion to take Evernorth stock at $10.00 a share. A $30 million convertible note signed in September converts at about $10.20. Those private placement shares carry registration rights, which allow them to be registered for resale after closing. XRPN is currently trading at about 3.8 times the price those investors paid.
The 168 price-to-earnings ratio Robinhood shows for XRPN does not describe a business. Before the merger, the SPAC's only income is interest on the trust cash.
The rest of the new names
| Company | Price, 12:10 p.m. | Today | Since Sept. 2 | P/E (Robinhood) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Armada II (XRPN) | $37.74 | +61.1% | +258.5% | 168.0 |
| Synaptics (SYNA) | $121.14 | +14.1% | +26.2% | loss |
| onsemi (ON) | $84.28 | +5.2% | +16.5% | 49.5 |
| Strategy (MSTR) | $159.39 | -0.7% | +29.4% | loss |
| Micron (MU) | $1,082.04 | -1.4% | +13.2% | 14.3 |
| Nike (NKE) | $33.17 | -5.7% | -13.3% | 16.9 |
| McDonald's (MCD) | $231.95 | +0.1% | -11.1% | 18.8 |
| American Airlines (AAL) | $13.07 | -0.5% | -0.3% | loss |
Synaptics and onsemi arrived together for a concrete reason: onsemi switched its takeover offer to $123 a share in cash after a rival approach. We worked through the deal spread in our Synaptics story. Nike is trending on a slide, not a rally, after its sales forecast. That story is here.
McDonald's is the opposite of XRPN: flat today, down 11% in a month, after touching a 52-week low of $229.61 on Thursday, on a P/E under 19. We found no company announcement in our feeds to explain the attention. The low price itself may be the draw. Strategy's 29% monthly gain tracks Bitcoin, which was at $85,128 on Coinbase at midday after touching $87,249 earlier.
What traders are watching
- Oct. 7 closing: the companies' expected date. Redemption totals in the closing 8-K will replace our estimate with an exact float.
- Oct. 8: the first day Evernorth itself trades as XRPN, with the private placement holders in the share count.
- XRP: the treasury's value moves with the token, so the stock's gap to its holdings is the figure to compare.
More on the lists in stocks and coin prices at /crypto-prices. Company filings are on SEC EDGAR.
Sources: list rankings, P/E ratios and market data via Robinhood; filings via SEC EDGAR; Evernorth and Armada II release via PR Newswire; quotes and price history via Nasdaq; crypto prices via Coinbase. The redemption estimate, 30-day changes and XRP value are our calculations. Some data may be delayed. This is market information, not investment advice.
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