jeff1234
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5]This article was in yesterdays USA Today.
5]SAN FRANCISCO — Xoom is going boom in its public-trading debut.
5]Shares of the online-payments company soared 42% in early trading, to $22.65, in its first day of trading today.
5]The stock, trading under the ticker symbol "XOOM," was offered at $16 a share last night, $1 higher than the top of the suggested range of $13 to $15. A total of 6.3 million shares were sold, with 1.1 million coming from early investors and the rest from the company, for a total take of $101.2 million and valuation of more than $500 million.
5]"This demonstrates the appetite for tech companies with disruptive technology," Xoom CEO John Kunze told USA TODAY in a phone interview today. "It's an example of a big market moving to digital channels."
5]The San Francisco-based company, co-founded in 2001 by early PayPal investor and Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz, lets users of mobile devices and the Internet send money to contacts in foreign countries.
5]Xoom charges fees to customers to complete the transactions, though its says the fees are much lower than those charged by Western Union and other traditional services. Consumers have used the platform to send $6.6 billion, leading to $80 million in Xoom revenue last year.
5]Though not profitable, Xoom's revenue grew 60% between 2011 and 2012.
5]Xoom's impressive debut comes as a welcome sign for tech stocks aimed at consumers. Such companies have faced skeptical investors since Facebook's IPO in May 2012. The social network's stock has yet to reach its price of $38 when it went public.
