Helped by coronavirus crisis, Wix becomes Israel’s second-highest valued company

Share price of popular website creator platform has increased more than threefold since March, peaking at $319 on Nasdaq, as locked down businesses move operations online

The Wix website-building app logo. (Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images/JTA)
The Wix website-building app logo. (Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images/JTA)

JTA — The coronavirus crisis has helped make Wix, the popular website creator platform, the second-highest valued Israeli company.

Its share price has increased more than threefold in the past five months from about $81 in March to trading as high as about $319 on the Nasdaq exchange last week before dropping to $277.94 on Monday.

Wix allows users to easily create websites with templates and drag and drop tools in a way similar to competitors such as WordPress and Squarespace.

A Motely Fool analysis published Monday on the Nasdaq website attributed the rise, also enjoyed by other digital solution providers, to the coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdown measures which has forced many businesses to increasingly use the internet to reach customers. In addition, many education institutes were forced to close up and move to online learning, creating another demand for web-building capabilities.

“We’ve made a leap from being a consumer product for a particular group to a necessity for many more people,” said Nir Zohar, the company’s president and chief operating officer. “It’s the way many people today are making a living, by selling online.”

Nir Zohar, president and chief operating officer at Wix.com in his Tel Aviv office, November 29, 2017 (Shoshanna Solomon/ Times of Israel)

Wix’s market cap was around $4 billion in 2018 — it is now over $14 billion, according to the Nasdaq website. That puts the nearly 15-year-old company close behind the cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies, which at $17.3 billion is Israel’s most valuable business.

Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan founded Wix in Tel Aviv in 2006.

Most Popular
read more: