Oran Holtzman was a 29 year-old accountant when, in 2013, he gambled on Israeli cosmetics company Il Makiage, which at the time was weighed down by debts totaling NIS 40 million. He took loans, mortgaged his home, and bought control of the company for NIS 12 million, contrary to all the advice he received.
"He came to me via a mutual acquaintance who sought to make a connection between us and said, ‘I’ve bought Il Makiage from the receiver,’" public relations executive Rani Rahav told "Globes" last year. "I said to him, ‘Look, we have 180 clients and we understand a bit about this world, and I think that it’s terrible. It’s a terrible company, what did you buy it for?’ Then he said to me, ‘I’ll float it on Wall Street.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Either he’s crazy or I’m crazy.’"
Thirteen years later, with a focus on online marketing, a tie-up with a global partner (Louis Vuitton) and a successful flotation on Wall Street, it turned out that Holtzman’s gamble had paid off handsomely. Exactly a year ago, the share price of Oddity Tech (Nasdaq: ODD), (the parent company of Il Makiage) of which Holtzman is CEO reached a peak that gave the company a market cap of $4.3 billion, less than two years after it had been floated at a valuation of $2 billion.
Oddity Tech, a technology company for cosmetics, holds cosmetics brand Il Makiage, and also the SpoiledChild skincare brand and Methodiq, a recently launched dermatology company. Last year’s peak in the share price followed double-digit growth in revenue, net profit and cash flow reported by Oddity Tech, which beat analysts’ estimates quarter after quarter.
Holtzman, together with his sister Shiran Holtzman-Erel, who serves as chief product officer in the company, expanded Oddity Tech’s international activity, and branded it as a technology company that facilitates online purchases of personalized cosmetics. "The beauty industry continues to change as we expected. Consumers are switching to online and to high-performance products," Holtzman said at the time, adding that growth online broadened Oddity Tech’s opportunity, and that its early investment in the field enabled it to maintain a strong financial model and "to play offense" as he put it.
Holtzman himself took advantage of the rise in the share price and sold shares at last year’s peak price for a total of $320 million. That was the third time he realized part of his holding. Altogether, the shares he has sold have brought him about $700 million cash, while he continued to hold Oddity Tech shares with a similar value.
To play defense
A year later, the situation is completely different, and it seems that Oddity Tech has to "play defense" and regain investors’ confidence. The company is currently traded at a market cap of $630 million after an 86% decline from the peak. In February, when it released its 2025 financial statements, it landed a bitter blow on its investors. The company had detected a breakdown at its main advertising partner (the name was not disclosed, but the assessment on the market is that the partner concerned is the Instagram social network of the Meta group). This led to an extraordinary rise in customer acquisition costs (CPA) and a drop in revenue, and to uncertainty about the future that led to the company refraining from publishing annual guidance.
Oddity Tech discovered the change somewhat late. It apparently stemmed from the fact that the company’s strategy includes a "try before you buy" option for Il Makiage products. The algorithm identified the rate of returns by customers as a negative indicator of the quality of the product, and reduced its exposure. Moreover, the quality of exposure also declined, because the rate of visitors to the website who left without further action grew.
Despite what the company described as progress towards a return to normal, at the time of the release of the first quarter financials last week the market was unconvinced. Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut wrote that Oddity Tech was still a "show me" story, and he remains neutral on the stock.
Oddity Tech repeated expectations of an improvement in the second half of the year, but the market remains skeptical. Oppenheimer analyst Matan Ben Zvi, who also maintains a neutral "Perform" rating for the company, says that despite early indications of progress, including a 28% fall in customer acquisition costs in May in comparison with April, the decline in the first quarter results will affect the rest of 2026 and will continue into 2027.
Oddity Tech itself stresses that the disruption is of a technical nature and is not connected to the strength of the brand or market saturation. According to the company, the rise in CPA was sudden and represented a sharp deviation from the trend, not a constant, gradual deterioration, and occurred at the same time in different markets (the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Israel).
Dana Zax, an expert on content and branding who advises international brands doesn’t work with Oddity Tech and is not closely familiar with it, but says, "The main message here, which is relevant to every company today, is not to become dependent on one digital platform. The platforms attempt to estimate the quality of the customer experience and change algorithms all the time, and they themselves change. For example, in the US TikTok was shut down and then reopened again. Customers have become accustomed to buying media, but you can’t just be reliant on that. If you build the whole business on something that isn’t yours, on ground that you don’t own, it can be swept away from under you."
"We will resolve the dislocation"
On that score, Oppenheimer says that Oddity Tech is examining diversification of advertisers but has not yet provided details to the market, and warns that the high concentration with one advertising partner represents a structural risk that should be taken into account. Ben Zvi points out that Oddity Tech’s main partner is by a long way the largest advertising platform in the beauty sector in the US, with over 50% of the market for acquiring new users, and therefore the ability to divert to other platforms is limited.
Oddity Tech, however, is optimistic, and in the conference call following the release of its financials Holtzman said, "As a company, we have navigated algorithmic adjustments by our ad partners in the past with success. We are hopeful based on the improvements we see today that we will resolve this dislocation and get back to our long track record of consistent strong growth and attractive profitability."
Most analysts are sitting on the fence as far as Oddity Tech is concerned. Eight are neutral and three are negative. None recommends exploiting the weakness in the stock to buy it. It would appear that most of them are waiting for the cloud of uncertainty to be removed and for sustained improvement in the algorithm story.
"The breakdown materially hurt the 2026 results, and there’s no doubt that after it is resolved the company will go back to beating the estimates as always, and with that, investor confidence will return," a source familiar with Oddity Tech says. He recalls that in the past it beat market estimates time and again, and that under Holtzman’s management it grew from almost nothing to revenue of $810 million and EBITDA of $163 million in 2025.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 14, 2026.
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