eToro raises $250m at $3.5bn valuation after nixing SPAC
Social investing platform eToro has raised $250 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion.
eToro raises $250m
New investors in the round included ION Group, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Velvet Sea Ventures, as well as a number of existing investors.
The funding stems from an Advance Investment Agreement (AIA) which eToro entered into in February 2021 as part of its proposed SPAC transaction.
An AIA is an agreement where investors pay in advance for shares that will be allocated at a later date. eToro secured the AIA in early 2021 as a form of insurance against the SPAC merger falling through.
Last summer, eToro and FinTech Acquisition Corp V, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), mutually agreed to terminate their proposed merger agreement.
The merger plans were officially announced in March 2021, while reports that eToro was planning to go public initially surfaced in January 2021.
eToro announced the funding alongside its full-year financial results, which show that despite wider market volatility, the firm’s multi-asset product offering ensured that commissions from equities and commodities partially offset the decrease in commissions from cryptoassets in 2022.
eToro chief financial officer Meron Shani says: “Total commissions for 2022 were $631 million, down versus our stellar performance in 2021, yet up 5% versus 2020.
“We continued to grow our user base despite more negative market sentiment and a reduction in our marketing spend. We ended the year with over 2.8 million funded accounts (up 17% YoY).”
Last year, eToro snapped up options trading platform Gatsby for $50 million and portfolio management tools provider Bullsheet.
