After a stellar year, CFD trading platform eToro hopes to capitalise on the boom in digital trading with a massive IPO worth more than $10bn.
Online trading platform eToro is going public is a massive £10.4bn deal as it attempts to capitalise on the surge in digital trading. Once the deal is closed later this year it expects to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange.
14 years ago, this Israeli company set out to ‘open up capital markets to everyone’. It offers online cryptocurrency and stockbroking and has proved incredibly popular. Today it has more than 20 million registered users with five million signing up in 2020 alone and a further 1.2billion signing up in January this year. Revenues have shot up by 147% over the previous year.
Under the deal it will join with Fintech Acquisition Corps, a special purchase acquisition company (SPAC) which will effectively go shopping for eToro. The agreement with is one of the largest SPAC deals of 2021 so far will see eToro receive $250million from a pot raised in December and $650 million from institutional investors including Fidelity and the Softbank.
- Further reading: How to invest in IPOs
This is the latest in a busy year for SPAC funding. Just halfway through March, it is already homing in on last year’s all time high of $78bn. Meanwhile, digital trading has also taken off during the pandemic with a number of other leading lights of the fintech world also considering IPOs.
Coinbase attempted to go public this year while Kraken has also admitted it is considering a public offering with rumours suggesting crypto mining firm Northern Data also plans to go public.
Rival online stock brokerage firm Robinhood has already gone public, but more recently it has hit tough times as it became embroiled in the Wall Street Bets Fiasco. It has been forced to raise funds with a line of credit from six banks.
This move allows them to capitalise on the struggles of its main competitor and place itself at the head of one of the boom industries of 2021.
Tom Cropper has been writing for us since 2015. Tom is a financial journalist and his work has appeared in titles such as the Guardian, Euromoney and many others.
