2014 was not the best year ever in sales of Israeli companies to foreign companies, but it did set a record in offerings by Israeli companies in the US capital market (IPOs and secondary offerings by public companies). Quite a few Israeli companies this year preferred flotations to being acquired. From "Globes" monitoring of primary market activity on Wall Street by Israeli companies, it emerges that so far this year, there have been 26 offerings, both IPOs and secondary offerings, by Israeli technology and biomedical companies. These offerings raised an all-time record of $3.6 billion, breaking the previous record of $3.3 billion set in 1999 during the notorious bubble. For the sake of comparison, Israeli Wall Street offerings totaled only $335 million in 1994, a number that has risen tenfold in the past 20 years, highlighting how Wall Street has become an important financing tool for the companies themselves, while blazing the trail to wealth for quite a few Israeli high-tech and biomedical entrepreneurs. 14 of the 26 Israeli Wall Street offerings in 2014 were IPOs, and 12 were secondary offerings.
Only four of the 14 IPOs were by information technology companies (Varonis Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: VRNS), Borderfree Inc. (Nasdaq: BRDR), Mobileye(NYSE: MBLY), and CyberArk Software Inc.(Nasdaq:CYBR). The other 10 were by biomedical or medical equipment companies, a figure that highlights the dominance of the biomedical industry in the primary market this year.
The largest IPO was by Mobileye, which has developed a system that warns drivers of potential traffic accidents. Mobileye raised $1.02 billion, including an offer for sale. The Mobileye IPO, the largest Israeli issue ever on Wall Street, shows how hot the primary market is this year (as a result of the prolonged boom on the secondary market). Mobileye is currently traded at a $10.8 billion market cap, double its value in the IPO, making it one of the 10 biggest Israeli companies on Wall Street. 2014 is not yet over; additional Israeli companies awaiting their turn on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are likely to again shatter the new record of $3.6 billion during the next two months.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 2, 2014
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