Three Wall Street-listed Israeli companies, namely Scitex, Indigo and Nur Macroprinters, will present their wares at the DRUPA exhibition opening today. For Scitex, which today is actually a holding company in the printing field, and especially for Indigo, developer of digital printers, this is the most important event in recent years. But for Nur, a niche market player, which operates in the field of digital printers for wide format printing, DRUPA is just one of many exhibitions. Nur, incidentally, is the only one of them to post substantial income growth from one quarter to the next, along with higher profits.
In Q1 2000, Nur reported income of $21.5 million, twice as much as in the corresponding quarter last year. Net profit also doubled to $2.6. million. The first quarter results of Scitex and Indigo, on the other hand, are rather lame, to put it mildly. Scitex, which recently merged its pre-press division with Creo of Canada, in consideration of 27% of Creo's share capital, reported a marginal profit of $1.4 million, while Indigo, which posted sales of $36.3 million, lost $7.1 million.
These two companies, however, are expecting a positive change. Scitex, which, on completion of the merger became a kind of holding company that invests in the fields of pre-press, digital printing, wide format printing and Internet initiatives, is hoping for accelerated growth in the CTP (computer-to-plate) systems market.
This growth is expected to come from the direction of Creo, which is traded on Wall Street and is considered, following its annexation of the Scitex pre-press division, the world leader in the manufacture and marketing of CTP systems for the pre-press industry.
Indigo is pinning all its hopes on DRUPA. Company founder and president Benny Landa hopes that, commencing from Q3 this year, Indigo will post accelerated growth, thanks to the new machines that are to be displayed at the exhibition. Wall Street apparently has faith in him; otherwise, it is hard to explain a 100% yield on the share price since the beginning of the year, up to $6.4, reflecting a value of $500 million. The Nur share too, we would point out, has performed outstandingly since the beginning of the year, advancing 40% to a price of $16, reflecting a value of $190 million. The Scitex share, incidentally, as distinct from other printing industry representatives, has fallen 18% since the beginning of the year, to $12, reflecting a value of $510 million.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 18 May 2000