A profitable Italian software company made a loud entrance on the U.S. stock market on Wednesday, in a debut that cut against the gloom hanging over technology listings.

Bending Spoons priced its initial public offering (IPO) at $29 a share and closed its first day of trading on the Nasdaq at $40.50 — a jump of roughly 40%, TechCrunch reported. At that price the 13-year-old, Milan-based company was worth about $25.7 billion, more than double its last private valuation of around $11 billion. The offering raised about $1.68 billion. (An IPO is the first time a private company sells shares to the public and lists on a stock exchange, both to raise money and to let early investors and employees cash out.)

What Bending Spoons does

Bending Spoons has grown by buying aging but well-known apps and squeezing profit out of them — typically through aggressive cost-cutting, new features and higher prices. Its portfolio reads like a tour of the consumer internet's past two decades: Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, Meetup, Eventbrite, Brightcove and, most famously, AOL, per Bloomberg.

The model resembles a private-equity playbook — acquire, cut costs, raise prices — but with a twist: rather than flipping companies for a quick resale, Bending Spoons keeps what it buys and runs it for the long term. Most of its revenue comes from subscriptions, the recurring model that now underpins most software.

Why a 40% first-day pop cuts both ways

A first-day surge that large is genuinely strong demand — but it isn't unambiguously good news for the company. A big "pop" can also mean the IPO was underpriced: shares sold to the bank's chosen investors at $29 that the open market immediately valued at $40 represent money the company arguably left on the table. Investors who got in at the offer price captured that gain; the company raised less than it might have.

Either way, the debut was a notable vote of confidence in a specific kind of software business. Much of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector — apps delivered over the internet on a subscription, rather than installed on your own computer — has faced a wary market this year, with investors punishing companies that burn cash for growth without clear profits. Bending Spoons pitched the opposite story: an operator that buys cheaply, cuts hard and turns a profit.

Why it matters

For the IPO market, a splashy, oversubscribed debut is a useful signal that investors will still pay up for tech listings — provided the company can show discipline and earnings, not just growth. For the software industry, Bending Spoons' rise is a reminder that there is real money in operating mature apps efficiently, not only in building the next new thing — though its cost-cutting, price-raising approach has drawn criticism from some users of the products it acquires. Boursel takes no view on the stock, and a strong open day says little about where shares go from here. The takeaway is narrower and real: in a nervous market for software, a profitable roll-up of old apps just pulled off one of the year's stronger debuts.