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Israel's Fiverr Hires Citigroup, JPMorgan for U.S. IPO

Israel's Fiverr Hires Citigroup, JPMorgan for U.S. IPO

(Bloomberg) -- Fiverr International Ltd., an Israeli startup offering an online marketplace for freelance services, hired Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to manage an initial public offering in New York, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Tel Aviv-based company could be valued at roughly $800 million, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private. Fiverr may sell the shares in the second half of the year, one of the people said. No final decisions have been made, and both the timing and the valuation may be amended, the people said.

Representatives for Fiverr, Citigroup and JPMorgan declined to comment.

Fiverr’s IPO would break a drought of new U.S. listings by Israel’s technology companies. The industry raised a record amount from American investors in 2014, when Jerusalem-based automotive-technology company Mobileye NV garnered nearly $1 billion from its share sale. The number of U.S. IPOs by Israeli firms has subsided since then as most startups chose to raise large amounts from private investors.

Founded in 2010, Fiverr has raised $111 million from investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners and Qumra Capital, according to Start-Up Nation Central, a nonprofit that tracks the industry. The firm, which allows professionals to offer creative and digital services such as graphic design and film editing online, has offices in U.S. cities including New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

--With assistance from Olivia Zaleski and Ruth David.

To contact the reporters on this story: Yaacov Benmeleh in Tel Aviv at ybenmeleh@bloomberg.net;Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Chitra Somayaji, Alastair Marsh

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