Text size

Shares of Israeli gig-economy company Fiverr International soared Thursday on the first day of trading for the freelance marketplace.

Fiverr stock (ticker: FVRR), which on Wednesday priced its IPO at $21 a share, closed Thursday up 90% to $39.90, substantially widening morning gains, after opening at $26. The IPO price means Fiverr will raise in the neighborhood of $100 million.

The shares priced higher than expected, suggesting healthy demand. Its IPO follows that of Upwork (UPWK), which went public in October. Its shares closed Thursday up 7.6% to $15.67, just above their $15 offer price though down from post-IPO prices above $20. The S&P 500 was up 0.4%.

“We are believers in the long-term potential of these marketplaces,” MKM Partners’ Rohit Kulkarni wrote Wednesday before trading began, noting risks including the an “unclear pathway to profitability.”

Fiverr reported some $75 million in 2018 revenue, up 44% from a year earlier, though it also reported a $36 million operating loss as expenses—about half of them for sales and marketing—neared $100 million.

Fiverr is paid based on fees related to the value of the services people purchase through the platform. (Sample services currently displayed on the company’s home page include voice-over, translation, and logo design.) Services are bought and sold based on fixed fees, rather than hourly rates.

“That level of transparency is game-changing for businesses,” Chief Executive Micha Kaufman told MarketWatch.

Fiverr is one of several recent or coming IPOs. Cloud-based security software CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD), which went public Wednesday, soared on its first trading day.

Slack Technologies, a workplace productivity tools company, is scheduled to start trading via a direct public listing next week.

This story was first published on June 13, 2019. It was updated to reflect closing prices and to add the quotes from Kulkarni and Kaufman.

Email David Marino-Nachison at david.marino-nachison@barrons.com. Follow him at @marinonachison and follow Barron’s Next at @barronsnext.