After years of being on the verge of taking the plunge, Saifun Semiconductors Ltd. (Nasdaq: SFUN) finally held its Wall Street IPO three months ago. All those years of delays, postponements, and replacement of underwriters paid off. The offering was a great success; the company raised $135.1 million gross, at $23.50 per share.
Since then, Saifun’s share has climbed 40%, and the company is now planning to strike in full force while the iron is hot. Sources inform "Globes" that Saifun plans to exploit the positive momentum through a secondary issue on Nasdaq, starting this May.
Capital market sources said that the issue would include an offer for sale by shareholders, headed by funds and financial investors that had invested in Saifun. The final date and size of the issue have not yet been settled, but estimates are that the company will raise $300 million or more. Saifun declined to respond to the report.
Founded by chairman and CEO Boaz Eitan, Saifun is expected to embark on its secondary issue with the same lineup of underwriters as in its IPO: Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, CIBC, William Blair & Co., and Raymond James.
Saifun has developed technology called NROM, which enables flash chip manufacturers to double the memory capacity of a chip of the same physical size.
The secondary issue is no surprise, since parties at interest in the company have made millions of dollars on paper, but did not take advantage of the rise in the share or the IPO to sell shares. It is only natural for the funds holding Saifun shares to want to complete an exit (probably only a partial one), and get some cash.
Saifun’s current shareholders include Eitan (39.1%), IDB Holding Corp. (TASE: IDBH) (9.6%), Gemini Israel Funds (6.9%), Concord Ventures (5.7%), Argos Capital Management (controlled by Ephraim (Efi) Gildor -- 5.5% acquired from Infineon Technologies (NYSE, FSE: IFX), and Saifun president Kobi Rozengarten (1.8%). Capital market sources noted that Eitan himself is also expected to sell “a nominal quantity of” shares in the issue in order to avoid remaining the only large shareholder in the company, while the funds’ holdings are decreasing.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on February 7, 2006