Shares of Etsy nearly doubled on the first day of trading Wednesday after the company’s initial public offering raised $267 million for the online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods.
The Brooklyn-based company and some of its backers sold 16.7 million shares for $16 a share in the IPO, and then nearly two hours after trading opened, prices shot up 93%, to $31, according to Bloomberg. The stock closed at $30 per share for the day.
“Today marks a significant expansion of the Etsy community as we welcome new investors to the Etsy community,” chief executive Chad Dickerson, 42, wrote on an Esty blog.
Dickerson, a former Yahoo! Executive, took over as CEO in 2011 after founder Rob Kalin left. Kalin started the marketplace in 2005 to sell his handmade wooden computers. By year-end 2014, Etsy had 1.4 million active sellers and almost 20 million buyers, and the company’s sales were $195.6 million.
Etsy reported a net loss of $15.2 million in 2014, compared with a 2013 net loss of $800,000.
“As a public company Etsy’s challenge will be to keep the artisans and craftmakers who sell their products on the site happy, as it also seeks to build scale for investors,” Bloomberg wrote.
Etsy is the first certified B Corp. with approved social and environmental performance metrics to have launched an IPO, according to the news service. Roughly $300,000 of the offering’s proceeds will fund Etsy.org, a non-profit for educating women and minorities on how to create their own businesses.
After the offering, Accel Partners was expected to own 22.4% of Etsy; Index Ventures, 10.6%; Union Square Ventures, 12.6%; and CEO Dickerson, 1.9%.