In a positive sign for initial public offerings, shares in eToro Group Ltd. closed their first day of trading up 29%, after the social trading and investment marketplace company’s shares debuted on the Nasdaq today.

The IPO saw eToro offer 11,923,018 Class A common shares at $52 per share. The stock traded as high as $74.28 during the day, before closing regular trading at $67.

Coming into its IPO, eToro had $12.6 billion in revenue in 2024, with net income of $192 million. Indicating strong growth potential, both figures were way up from $3.89 billion in revenue and $15.3 million in net income in 2023.

The decision by eToro to go public followed a previously failed attempt by the company to trade on public markets through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company FinTech Acquisition Corp. V. Announced in March 2021, the plans for the SPAC merger were terminated in July 2022, officially because of conditions between the two companies not being satisfied, but more likely market conditions were a dominant factor.

Noting the significance of the offering, eToro co-founder and Chief Executive Yoni Assia told MarketWatch that the IPO was the first from a fintech company in about four years.

“Some of the fintech companies went public a bit too early in 2021 when valuations were very high and not based on profitability,” Assia said. “That was our lesson — to focus on scaling up profitable growth to become a public company.”

There’s little doubt that the positive result of eToro’s IPO will be well-received by the broader market, given an ongoing drought in IPOs over the last few years, despite a few IPOs here and there.

Other companies that have gone public so far this year include identity security company SailPoint Technologies Inc., which raised $1.38 billion at $23 per share on Feb. 13 and CoreWeave Inc., which disappointed on debut in March.

Companies lining up to go public later this year include stablecoin firm Circle Internet Group Inc., which announced plans to go public on April 1, collaborative design software startup Figma Inc., which also announced on April 15, and more recently, financial services company Chime Financial Inc., which announced its IPO plans on May 13.

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