It has been
two weeks since anyone moved the needle on iFOREX Financial Trading Holdings on
the London Stock Exchange, and the silence is becoming hard to ignore.
The CFD
broker, which listed on the LSE’s Main Market on February 25 after an eight-month
delay, is sitting
at around 207 pence per share, roughly 6% above its 195p offer price, but that
figure tells investors almost nothing useful.
The
arithmetic here is straightforward. When iFOREX priced
its IPO at 195 pence,
it issued 4,487,179 new ordinary shares, representing just 20.2% of its total
share capital. No existing shareholders sold down their stakes. The raise
totaled £8.75 million against a company valuation of roughly £43.3 million.
That leaves
only one-fifth of the company available to trade, and even within that slice,
institutional investors who participated in the placing are typically under
informal expectations not to flip quickly.
Founder
Eyal Carmon, who holds 58.91% of the company post-listing and is selling
nothing, has agreed to a 12-month lock-up, as have the company’s directors and
senior managers. The result is a stock with so little tradeable supply that a
single motivated buyer or seller could move the price by a meaningful
percentage, which also means most cautious investors simply won’t touch it.
Source: LSE
The Debut Pop That Quickly
Went Quiet
Itai Sadeh, the CEO of the iForex Group
The first day of
trading looked more promising. Shares opened above the offer price and quickly moved roughly 6%
higher, driven by a small burst of post-IPO enthusiasm. CEO Itai Sadeh called
the listing “a pivotal moment in iFOREX’s evolution,” and noted that
the oversubscribed placing “reflects investor confidence in our strategy,
solid fundamentals and scalable operating model.”
But that
momentum evaporated fast. Within days, volume dried up entirely. By the first
week of March, the shares were effectively frozen. No analysts cover the stock.
No major institutional holders have disclosed positions. And with a market cap
of just over £46 million at current prices, the company sits well below the
threshold that would attract meaningful attention from UK equity fund managers.
Financials That Didn’t
Exactly Build Excitement
The numbers
published ahead of the listing didn’t give
investors much to work with, either. iFOREX reported 2025 revenue of $48.8 million, slightly below
the $50.1 million recorded in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the year is expected to
come in at around $4 million, down sharply from $9.7 million the previous year.
Net profit for the first half of 2025 was just over $1.2 million, a 63.5% drop
compared with the same period in 2024.
The company
attributed some of the weakness to low market volatility during the third
quarter and the prolonged uncertainty surrounding its IPO timeline. It also
acknowledged in the prospectus that a “short-term revenue initiative”
it tried during that difficult stretch “was ineffective and… promptly
reversed.” The prospectus added that “the Group has positive momentum
into FY26,” though that characterization comes from the company itself.
One
structural concern that analysts
flagged ahead of the listing remains unresolved: over 95% of iFOREX’s revenue comes from its
British Virgin Islands-regulated offshore entity, while its Cyprus-registered
firm contributes the rest.
The broker
operates primarily in Japan, India, and the Middle East, but holds no license
in any of those markets, relying instead on reverse solicitation arrangements
that regulators in those jurisdictions have increasingly questioned.
The eToro Contrast
The
comparison to eToro is instructive, even if the two companies are playing in
different leagues. When eToro finally completed its long-awaited US IPO last
year, it came in at
a $4 billion-plus valuation, was 10 times oversubscribed, and attracted
significant institutional interest off the back of a crypto trading boom and
surging retail engagement.
The stock
has had its own struggles since listing. eToro posted
record 2025 revenue of $868 million yet its shares have faced pressure amid
broader market turbulence, but at least it has a market. Trades happen every
day. Analysts write about it. Investors argue about it.
iFOREX, by
contrast, completed an IPO more comparable in scale to a small regional
listing. It raised less than $11 million in gross proceeds and trades on a
market where the broader
IPO pipeline has been sputtering for years.
The London
Stock Exchange has been losing ground to New York as a listing destination for
some time, and smaller listings on its Main Market often disappear from the
radar within weeks of debut.
For iFOREX
shares to start moving meaningfully, a few things would need to happen. The
company would need to deliver financial results that exceed the underwhelming
2025 figures. It would need to secure at least one of the regulatory licenses
it’s targeting in Australia, the UAE, Malaysia, Chile, or the UK – progress on
any of those fronts could serve as a genuine catalyst. And it would need to
attract a market maker or analyst willing to put the stock in front of
investors who weren’t part of the original placing.
It has been
two weeks since anyone moved the needle on iFOREX Financial Trading Holdings on
the London Stock Exchange, and the silence is becoming hard to ignore.
The CFD
broker, which listed on the LSE’s Main Market on February 25 after an eight-month
delay, is sitting
at around 207 pence per share, roughly 6% above its 195p offer price, but that
figure tells investors almost nothing useful.
The
arithmetic here is straightforward. When iFOREX priced
its IPO at 195 pence,
it issued 4,487,179 new ordinary shares, representing just 20.2% of its total
share capital. No existing shareholders sold down their stakes. The raise
totaled £8.75 million against a company valuation of roughly £43.3 million.
That leaves
only one-fifth of the company available to trade, and even within that slice,
institutional investors who participated in the placing are typically under
informal expectations not to flip quickly.
Founder
Eyal Carmon, who holds 58.91% of the company post-listing and is selling
nothing, has agreed to a 12-month lock-up, as have the company’s directors and
senior managers. The result is a stock with so little tradeable supply that a
single motivated buyer or seller could move the price by a meaningful
percentage, which also means most cautious investors simply won’t touch it.
Source: LSE
The Debut Pop That Quickly
Went Quiet
Itai Sadeh, the CEO of the iForex Group
The first day of
trading looked more promising. Shares opened above the offer price and quickly moved roughly 6%
higher, driven by a small burst of post-IPO enthusiasm. CEO Itai Sadeh called
the listing “a pivotal moment in iFOREX’s evolution,” and noted that
the oversubscribed placing “reflects investor confidence in our strategy,
solid fundamentals and scalable operating model.”
But that
momentum evaporated fast. Within days, volume dried up entirely. By the first
week of March, the shares were effectively frozen. No analysts cover the stock.
No major institutional holders have disclosed positions. And with a market cap
of just over £46 million at current prices, the company sits well below the
threshold that would attract meaningful attention from UK equity fund managers.
Financials That Didn’t
Exactly Build Excitement
The numbers
published ahead of the listing didn’t give
investors much to work with, either. iFOREX reported 2025 revenue of $48.8 million, slightly below
the $50.1 million recorded in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the year is expected to
come in at around $4 million, down sharply from $9.7 million the previous year.
Net profit for the first half of 2025 was just over $1.2 million, a 63.5% drop
compared with the same period in 2024.
The company
attributed some of the weakness to low market volatility during the third
quarter and the prolonged uncertainty surrounding its IPO timeline. It also
acknowledged in the prospectus that a “short-term revenue initiative”
it tried during that difficult stretch “was ineffective and… promptly
reversed.” The prospectus added that “the Group has positive momentum
into FY26,” though that characterization comes from the company itself.
One
structural concern that analysts
flagged ahead of the listing remains unresolved: over 95% of iFOREX’s revenue comes from its
British Virgin Islands-regulated offshore entity, while its Cyprus-registered
firm contributes the rest.
The broker
operates primarily in Japan, India, and the Middle East, but holds no license
in any of those markets, relying instead on reverse solicitation arrangements
that regulators in those jurisdictions have increasingly questioned.
The eToro Contrast
The
comparison to eToro is instructive, even if the two companies are playing in
different leagues. When eToro finally completed its long-awaited US IPO last
year, it came in at
a $4 billion-plus valuation, was 10 times oversubscribed, and attracted
significant institutional interest off the back of a crypto trading boom and
surging retail engagement.
The stock
has had its own struggles since listing. eToro posted
record 2025 revenue of $868 million yet its shares have faced pressure amid
broader market turbulence, but at least it has a market. Trades happen every
day. Analysts write about it. Investors argue about it.
iFOREX, by
contrast, completed an IPO more comparable in scale to a small regional
listing. It raised less than $11 million in gross proceeds and trades on a
market where the broader
IPO pipeline has been sputtering for years.
The London
Stock Exchange has been losing ground to New York as a listing destination for
some time, and smaller listings on its Main Market often disappear from the
radar within weeks of debut.
For iFOREX
shares to start moving meaningfully, a few things would need to happen. The
company would need to deliver financial results that exceed the underwhelming
2025 figures. It would need to secure at least one of the regulatory licenses
it’s targeting in Australia, the UAE, Malaysia, Chile, or the UK – progress on
any of those fronts could serve as a genuine catalyst. And it would need to
attract a market maker or analyst willing to put the stock in front of
investors who weren’t part of the original placing.
