“Extraordinary opportunity”: Wix launches $1.75 billion buyback auction
Company signals confidence in its future as it offers shareholders up to a 10% premium and seeks to retire a large portion of its stock.
After announcing a $250 million private fundraising round on Wednesday, capital intended entirely to repurchase its own shares, internet company Wix is now unveiling an unusual move on Wall Street.
Instead of continuing to buy shares gradually under its previously approved $2 billion share repurchase program, Wix plans to launch a reverse auction, offering shareholders the opportunity to sell their holdings back to the company in a transaction worth up to $1.75 billion.
Under the plan, shareholders will be able to tender their shares within a price range of $80 to $92 per share. At the top of that range, the offer represents a premium of nearly 10% over the company’s recent share price.
Wix shares surged 13% on Wednesday following the release of its latest financial results, which also included an update on the strategic acquisition of Base44. The company said the business has already reached a $100 million annual revenue run rate, just nine months after the acquisition.
In pre-market trading on Wall Street, the stock was up another 3%. Yet despite generating $2 billion in revenue and $600 million in cash flow in 2025, Wix still trades at a market value of less than $5 billion.
“The current situation has created an extraordinary opportunity for Wix, one that hardly ever occurs in the life of a company,” said Nir Zohar, the company’s president, during a press conference with Israeli media. “There is a complete disconnect between the share price and Wix’s financial performance.”
Zohar argued that software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies are currently trading at historically low revenue multiples, a situation he said is unprecedented even compared with the dot-com crash or the 2008 financial crisis.
“That’s why you see companies like Pinterest or Salesforce launching large share buybacks,” he added, referring in particular to the $50 billion buyback program announced by Salesforce after publishing strong financial results for 2025.
Wix shares have fallen sharply since the beginning of the year, along with many other software companies. The decline reflects investor concerns that organizations may increasingly rely on internal software tools built using AI, rather than purchasing solutions from large external vendors.
Wix, originally known for its website-building platform, attempted to address that shift through its acquisition of Base44 last summer. The deal introduced the company to the world of “vibe coding,” a form of programming that allows software to be built using AI-driven natural language prompts. However, the acquisition has not yet translated into a higher market valuation.
Now Wix is making a dramatic move to signal its confidence to investors. If the full $1.75 billion allocated for the reverse auction is used, the company could retire up to 30% of its outstanding shares.
The company currently holds $1.7 billion in cash and has also secured a credit line of up to $500 million from an Israeli bank, which it plans to use if shareholder participation in the tender offer exceeds expectations.
As part of the financing strategy, Wix also announced on Wednesday a $250 million private placement, executed at a 5% discount to the market price.
Most of the investment is coming from Durable Capital Partners, a fund that typically invests in late-stage private software companies as well as public technology firms. Durable already owns about 2% of Wix and is leading a group of investors participating in the deal.
Each investment unit includes a share purchased at the discounted price, along with warrants to buy additional shares equivalent to 25% of the initial investment at a 25% premium, exercisable over the next three years.
Durable and the other investors participating in the round, whose identities have not yet been disclosed, have agreed to an unusually long one-year lock-up period, during which they will not be able to sell their shares.
Zohar also addressed the company’s operations amid the challenges created by the ongoing war.
“Obviously it doesn’t help and it slows things down,” he said. “But the dedication here is incredible, and many employees abroad are supporting the activity in Israel.”
“We finalized the closing of these financial processes and held investor discussions about the results from bomb shelters,” he added. “Nothing has stopped, but everything is moving more slowly.”
As an example, Zohar noted that the company’s AI website-building product, launched earlier this year, was released a month later than planned because of the war in June.
Earlier this year Wix also stirred debate in Israel’s tech sector when it announced a return to a five-day office workweek. The move fueled speculation that the company was attempting to carry out “quiet layoffs” by encouraging employees unwilling to return to full-time office work to resign.
Zohar rejected that interpretation, saying Wix expects its workforce at the end of 2026 to remain roughly unchanged from 2025, at about 5,300 employees.
“There is always movement in the high-tech labor market,” he said. “But those who were broken by the transition back to a five-day office were probably already on the edge.”
“The idea is not to lay people off. Layoffs won’t make those who stay better at AI,” he added. “The real challenge is changing the way we work so we can become more productive.”
“We still have many ideas we haven’t developed, and AI can help us build them faster. The day we feel that there are no more ideas left to pursue, that’s when we’ll have a problem. But we’re very far from that point.”
