Israel’s Fiverr shares are up about 75% on its first day on the New York Stock Exchange. The current share price is $ 36, compared with $ 21 in the offering. The price reflects a company value of $ 1.1 billion, compared to a value of $ 650 million in the offering.
Fiverr has developed a trading arena to connect freelancers who perform digital works to customers around the world. Freelancers offer more than 200 categories of digital services across eight areas – graphics and design, digital marketing, writing and translation, video and animation, music and audio, programming, business, and lifestyle.
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According to the company, in the nine years since its establishment, Fiverr has used 830,000 freelancers who have sold their services to more than 5.5 million buyers from 160 countries. And has passed through more than 50 million transactions (money transfers).
At the end of the first quarter of 2019, Fiverr had 255,000 active freelancers and 2.1 million active buyers. Active users are those who have sold or purchased service through the site over the past 12 months. The average annual spend on purchases of services by Fiverr grew steadily, and in the first quarter of 2019 reached $150, compared to $126 in the corresponding quarter of 2018.
Fiverr’s revenue in 2018 was $75.5 million, up 45% from 2017. The company ended 2018 with a loss of $ 36 million, compared with a loss of $ 19 million in 2017. The company lost $ 8 million in the first three months of 2019, about half of the loss in the corresponding period in 2018. The company expects its losses to remain in the foreseeable future due to growth plans and investment in development.
Fiverr’s shareholders’ equity at the end of March 2019 was $52.5 million and cash in the amount of $34.6 million. The company has raised $170 million since its inception. About $53 million of the sum was raised in November 2018, plus another $4 million in February – investments that Fiverr had not reported previously and which were disclosed in the prospectus. As of the end of March 2019, Fiverr had 363 employees.
The company was founded in 2010 by CEO Micha Kaufman, and Shay Vinegar, who left in 2014 to set up Lemonade, a startup for the insurance industry. At the beginning Fiverr offered freelancers services for only $5. Since 2014, the company has provided free pricing for the services offered on its website, even as much as $10,000, but many service providers still set the minimum price, based on a transaction fee from the seller and service fees from the buyer.
