Wix is now Israel’s most valuable publicly traded company.
Since the online website building-tool provider published its financial results last Wednesday, the stock has risen more than 26%, giving it a market capitalization of nearly $19.7 billion over the weekend.
Fourth-quarter revenue jumped 38% year over year to $282.5 million, as the company added 185,000 new premium subscribers, Tel Aviv-based Wix reported Wednesday. The stock surged nearly 14% on Thursday alone, as a number of analysts raised their investment outlooks for the stock on strong guidance from the company.
“It is clear that we can now become a dominant player on the Internet, and I expect us to strengthen this position significantly over the coming decade,” Wix CEO and co-founder Avishai Abrahami said. “My goal and belief is that at this rate of growth, in the next five-seven years, 50% of anything new built on the Internet will be done on Wix.”
The company gave guidance that revenues would rise about 30% in 2021, and that it will spend $60m. this year on product development and increasing its staff.
Wix’s stock opened trading on Monday down about 2% to $346, representing a market capitalization of $19.3b. The stock traded below $280 on February 16.
Wix went public in 2013 at a company valuation of $600m. The company’s flagship product, which makes it easy for private individuals and companies to build a website with no maintenance, was updated in the past quarter with its new Editor X platform for fully collaborative Web creation.
The company’s registered user base reached 196.7 million users at the end of 2020, as paying subscribers rose to 5.5 million. The company invests heavily in marketing, and it featured celebrities Gal Gadot and Karlie Kloss in its Super Bowl commercials.
Wix’s market cap overtook that of Israeli cancer-drug maker Novocure, which was worth $18.4b. as of Monday morning. Over the past few weeks, Check Point Software, Solar Edge and Nice Systems have all had that distinction at various points.
For most of the past four years, Check Point has been Israel’s most valuable company. In August 2017, the IT security giant’s market cap overtook that of Teva Pharmaceuticals for the first time. Teva had previously been the largest company in Israel for nearly 20 years and was worth as much as $70b. until a string of bad decisions and market setbacks led to a state of crisis at the company once known as Israel’s biggest success story.
At the beginning of trading on Monday morning, Check Point and Solar Edge were each worth $16b., and Nice Systems was valued at $15.3b.