Internet co Wix doubles workforce in 2 years

Wix
Wix

80% of the company's employees are in Israel.

Israeli Internet company Wix.com Ltd. (Nasdaq: WIX) has nearly doubled its workforce in two years, according to the 20F form it filed yesterday. The company had 1,119 employees at the end of 2015, compared with 898 at the end of 2014 and 584 at the end of 2013. Nearly 80% of the company's employees are in Israel, with the rest being divided between the US, Lithuania, Brazil, and Germany.

Wix, which has developed a platform for establishing websites that appeals mainly to small and medium-sized businesses, has an $850 million market cap. The company's five highest-paid employees earned $373,000-434,000 in 2015. The cost of founder and CEO Avishai Avrahami's compensation was $434,000 and that of his cofounder and CTO Giora Kaplan $425,000. Company president and COO Zohar had a compensation cost of $384,000, VP marketing Omer Shai $374,000, and CFO Lior Shemesh $373,000.

Avrahami has a 3.5% stake in the company with a current value of $30.7 million, and Kaplan owns 2.1%, worth $18.8 million at present. The largest shareholder in the company is Mangrove II Management, which has been a shareholder in the company since before its IPO in 2013. Mangrove owns 20.5% of Wix, and Bessemer Venture Partners, another pre-IPO investor, owns 9.6%.

Wix employees exercised 1.5 million options in 2015 at an average exercise price of $2.50, giving an aggregate $28.9 million benefit. 1.5 million options were allocated to employees in 2015 at an average exercise price of $19.80 (for the sake of comparison, the current share price is $21.40). At the end of 2015, employees held six million exercisable options that were in the money, reflecting aggregate benefit of $112 million.

Wix posted a $31.4 million non-GAAP net loss on $204 million in revenue in 2015, and its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) totaled $14.7 million. The company derived 51% of its revenue from the US and 27% from Europe.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 14, 2016

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016

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