The company succeeded in raising $90 million through its IPO.
Shopping.com operates an online comparison-shopping service in which it receives revenue every time a user clicks through to a merchant's Web site.
Renaissance Capital, a Greenwich, Conn.-based independent research firm that tracks new issues, noted that Shopping.com has come a long way since its first ill-fated attempt to go public four years ago, just before the Internet bubble burst.
At that time, Shopping.com had a miniscule $525,000 in trailing sales and mounting losses, Renaissance noted. By contrast, it is now the largest online comparison shopping service in the U.S. with more than 20 million users a month and with revenue of $67 million in 2003. That was more than double sales of $29.1 million in 2002 and more than five times the sales of $12.7 million in 2001.
On its first day of trading on the Nasdaq, Shopping.com's share price soared more than 50%, reflecting a company value of $750 million.
At that valuation, Shopping.com (Nasdaq:SHOP) is the largest Israeli Internet company on Wall Street in history and the fourth-largest online shopping destination behind eBay, Amazon and Yahoo!
The company was set up in 1997 and employs 300, about 100 of them in Israel. Shopping.com is registered as an American company, operating from Brisbane, California, and trades on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker SHOP. The on-line comparison shopping site maintains offices in Netanya, Israel industrial zone.