Initial public offerings or IPOs are known as a great way for investors to make a big profit in a relatively short time. On average, they can bring investors 40% returns in the first 3 months. Once the initial funding stages are out of the way, IPOs can be a great way for companies to sell their shares on the open market and raise more capital to continue their growth.If you’re into e-commerce stocks, you may have wondered, “is Wish publicly traded?” Read on to find out about Wish stock IPO and all the important information about Wish IPO date and price.
Wish History
Wish is an American e-commerce platform that lets sellers list products and sell them directly to customers.
Wish is operated by ContextLogic Inc., a company founded in 2010 in San Francisco, California by Piotr Szulczewski, a former engineer at Google. In 2011 Szulczewski decided to rebrand the company as Wish and invited college friend Danny Zhang to be the CTO.
Wish was originally an application that let shoppers create wish lists with their favorite products and match them with sellers. The company seeks to personalize the shopping experience for every user (hey that’s a bit like Gainy personalizes your investment experience he-he).
In 2013 Wish became a full-fledged e-commerce website, asking users to list their items on the Wish platform, and started charging a commission on each sale. The platform has a focus on discounted goods, from cheap products for the home to toys and electronics. It targets consumers with lower incomes and more affordable options than on Amazon and other websites. Wish uses payment service providers that process the payments and does not deal with managing stock or returns.
In 2017 Wish became the most-downloaded e-commerce app in the US, and the following year, the most-downloaded app worldwide. The company’s revenue reached $1.9 billion in 2019. Despite slow growth in 2019, the trend of shopping online really took off during the pandemic, and Wish was able to capitalize on that.
The platform has 26 million monthly active users and over 600,000 merchants.
Wish growth and expansion fueled by the pandemic made the management ask the question, when is Wish going public?”
Read on to find out about Wish IPO 2020 and other key info.
Wish Public Listing Key Data and IPO Date
Wish IPO Date: December 15, 2020
Ticker: WISH
Exchange: Nasdaq
IPO stock price: $24
Valuation at IPO: $11.2 billion
Market cap (9/8/22): $1.147 billion
CEO: Vijay Talwar
Category: Online shopping
Wish launched its IPO on Nasdaq on November 10, 2021 with the stock symbol WISH.
They launched a traditional IPO instead of merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a black-check company created solely for the purpose of merging with a company to help go public. This makes the IPO process cheaper and easier but has its downsides like giving up too much equity.
The Wish IPO price was set at $22-24. Trading opened on Tuesday, December 15, the first trade was $22.75 per share. The company raised $1.1 billion in its IPO, which brought up the company’s valuation of over $14 billion.
Founder and ex-CEO Piotr Szulczewski, who owns 18% of Wish had a net worth of $1.8 billion around their IPO date, but was dropped off the Forbes billionaire list after the stock lost over 90% of its price from its all-time high of $31.
So What About Investing Now?
Just like many other companies that had IPOs in 2020-2021, the Wish IPO did not age well. The stock has been going down for some time, and so has the company’s business. Despite benefiting from the pandemic initially, the market weakened and so did Wish’s business.
Wish has had many issues with counterfeit and illegal goods that led to the platform being delisted from Google search in France in 2021. User growth and revenue growth have been declining, which is a bad sign for investors as this doesn’t paint a bright future for the company. The company is unprofitable and has a high debt-to-earnings ratio.
On the flip side, the company is not giving up. The recently appointed CEO Vijay Tawar, a turnaround specialist, is working on turning things around for the business. Their plan is to boost user confidence in the platform, cut down on costs and less profitable items, and work on improving the customer experience.
So if Wish does manage to recover and succeed in the long run, buying now will mean additional value for those who believe in the company. That would also make the current stock price of under $2 a steal.
However, investments like these are speculative and much riskier than big companies with proven business models, robust earnings, and potential to scale.
Check out our IPO section to look at other scheduled IPOs. If you want to find companies that match your interests, investment goals and portfolio, try Gainy for some great IPO investment ideas, as well as established blue-chip companies and a variety of other assets.
FAQ
When is the Wish IPO date?
The Wish stock IPO date was December 15, 2021, when the e-commerce was listed on Nasdaq with the ticker WISH.
Is Wish a public company?
Yes, when a company launches an IPO (or initial public offering) this means they become a public company whose shares are traded on the stock exchange.
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