Webull shares fall 20% after House panel cites national security risk from China ties

Crowdfund Insider put Webull's market value at roughly $3.1 billion ^[10]. A 20% fall ^[9] removes about $620 million of equity value if that figure was taken before the drop, or about $775 million if it was taken after ^[18]. The committee puts the customer assets Webull holds at $24.6 billion ^[11], so the whole company trades at about an eighth of what its customers keep with it ^[16]. Spread across the 28 million users Webull reports ^[2], those assets come to about $880 a head ^[17]. If some of those users hold no money, the average funded balance is higher.

The committee had already written to Webull before anyone bought its 2025 listing ^[20]. In my view the 20% priced the report's details, chiefly the staff count and the customer cash. Webull is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, has its headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida, and traces its origins to Hunan Fumi Information Technology ^[7]. If 863 people are nearly two-thirds of the workforce, Webull employs roughly 1,300 people worldwide ^[19]. The panel also argued that Beijing's laws can require companies to hand over data and cooperate with Chinese authorities ^[8].

"Using technology providers in mainland China and an opaque China-linked ownership structure, Webull exposes its data to our foremost adversary," Moolenaar said ^[3]. "Investors should heed this information when choosing who they do business with," he said ^[4]. The remedy he named is customers leaving. Neither report describes any step by a securities regulator or names another broker with Chinese roots. On this record, the risk sits with Webull alone.

Crowdfund Insider quotes Webull saying the report contained "significant inaccuracies" and reached "unsupported conclusions" ^[21]. Quartz, citing CNBC, reports that Webull did not respond to a request for comment ^[22].

If no regulator follows the report and the business is untouched, the 20% can come back. A regulator taking up the balance-sheet cash, the part of the case the committee put in dollar terms ^[12], would keep the discount in place. Customers acting on Moolenaar's advice would deepen it. Quartz names Robinhood, Charles Schwab and E-Trade as Webull's competitors ^[14].

I think the share price has fallen further than the business has. The case against that view is the headcount charge. If the committee's figure holds, Webull told investigators it had no Chinese staff ^[13], and that gives it a credibility problem with regulators that customer flows will not fix. The test is the next customer-asset figure Webull discloses, set against the committee's $24.6 billion ^[11]. A figure at or above that level would mean shareholders paid for the finding and customers did not.