There is no shortage of small and mid-sized Israeli companies suitable for London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the secondary market of the London Stock Exchange, and it is enough for one or two companies to list for others to follow suit.
Three-year old PeerTV plc may be the company that will break the three-year freeze in which no Israeli company floated on the AIM. Sources inform ''Globes'' that the IPTV provider of streaming TV content for the Internet recently raised $2.4 million at a company value of $13 million. The offering was held at ₤0.45 per share, a modest figure that will help the company keep its head above water in the medium term.
PeerTV reopened the door for Israeli companies to list on the AIM, but its IPO was far from a great success. The company originally planned to raise up to a gross $10 million, at a company value of $32 million. The partial failure of the IPO may indicate unwillingness by British investment institutions, at least as far investing in new high-tech companies with big dreams but few receipts are concerned.
PeerTV reportedly did not want to hold its IPO at such a low price, and preferred postponing the rest of the offering in order to raise more capital at a later date. PeerTV will begin trading on December 30, joining the 17 Israeli companies currently on the AIM - half the number that were listed in better times - and will try to justify the decision to go public.
PeerTV, founded by VP production and product marketing Chaim Bechor and chairman and CTO Eatamar Drori, is an IPTV company. Video over Internet is a hot sector, witness the success of YouTube. The booming IPTV market is reflected in PeerTV's results. It posted $5.1 million revenue in the first half of 2010, up five-fold from the $982,000 revenue in the first half of 2009, and compared with $3.5 million in 2009 as a whole. Net profit was a $156,000.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 23, 2010
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