Beneath the radar of most local investors investors, Israeli company ViryaNet Ltd. (Pink Sheets: VRYAF) has been acquired by US company Verisae Inc. The sale was carried out at a handsome premium but looking over the long term this was not an especially impressive exit. SaaS company Verisae will pay $18.8 million cash for ViryaNet.
ViryaNet provides software solutions that optimize and allow for the continuous improvement of service processes for mobile workforces.
The company was founded by chairman Shmuel Cohen and Memy Ish-Shalom serves as CEO. ViryaNet held its IPO on Nasdaq in September 2000 raising $25.6 million at a company value of $173 million. The IPO just beat the bursting of the dot.com bubble. At its peak the company had a market cap of $200 million. Eventually the company's share price fell so far it began trading on the pink sheets. On Tuesday it had a market cap of just $11 million but news of the sale pushed the share price up yesterday by 19% on a high trading turnover and at the close ViryaNet had a market cap of $13.2 million still leaving a gap to be closed with Verisae's purchase price.
ViryaNet was founded in Israel in 1988 at R.T.S. Relational Technology Systems, and changed its name shortly before the IPO. The company is now headquartered in Massachusetts with offices in Florida and its Israeli operations in Jerusalem's Har Hotzvim. At the end of 2012, the company had 61 employees, 23 of them in Israel.
When the sale is completed, ViryaNet will become a business unit of Verisae.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 12, 2014
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