A year after selling its core business Transducer Controls Corporation to a strategic investor in the US for $35 million, Tedea Technological Development and Automation Ltd.(TASE: TEDE), controlled by CEO Mordechai Gorfung, is entering a new field. Yesterday, it announced that it had signed an option agreement to acquire two Israeli companies that manufacture equipment for the semiconductor industry, for NIS 100 million. Tedea says that the aggregate revenue of the two companies was NIS 65 million in 2011 and that their net profit was NIS 17 million. Sources inform ''Globes'' that the two companies in question are Noga Engineering & Technology (2008) Ltd. and Noga Tools Ltd., owned by the Hirsch family.
Gustav Hirsch founded Noga Engineering in 1980, and his two sons, Naftali and Shalom, own it in equal shares. Shalom is the CEO. The company is based in the Shlomi Industrial Zone in the western Galilee, and manufactures blades, scrapers, and specialty cutting tools, which are sold in over 50 countries.
Noga Engineering owns 50% of subsidiary Noga Tools, with the rest held by Peled Technical Supply Ltd.
After the sale of the Transducer Controls, Tedea is left with a 78% holding in Molodan Ltd. (TASE: MLDN-L), founded in 2005 jointly with the FITE fund, managed by Ishay Davidi. Molodan currently holds several companies, such as Asymblix (50%), which produces printed circuits in small series for research and development purposes; Iphotonix (84%), a developer of communications equipment; and Wi-Fi solutions company GoNet Systems, which completed a fund raising round of $8 million last week at a valuation of $50 million after the money. Molodan lent NIS 7.5 million to oil and gas exploration systems, due by the end of this year.
Tedea proposed to Molodan to participate in the acquisition of the two industrial companies, with a share of up to 50%. Tedea has deposited NIS 2.5 million with a trustee, and is now carrying out due diligence, which is expected to take about four months. According to the notification to the stock exchange, the deal will be completed in January 2013 at the earliest, subject to certain conditions, the main one being that the acquired companies' profit for 2012 will not be lower than for 2011.
Tedea posted a net profit of $20.2 million in 2011, following the sale of Transducer Controls Corporation. It had no sales in the first quarter of 2012, and made a modest $140 thousand profit.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 4, 2012
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