Aesthetic device manufacturer Syneron Medical of Yokne'am yesterday filed its first draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise $75 million, at a company value of $330 million.
The issue will include an offer to sell by company shareholders, who are expected to sell 500,000 shares for $7.5 million. Syneron is expected to grant the chief underwriter, Citigroup Global Markets Inc., and secondary underwriters CIBC World Markets Corp. and Stephens Inc., a green shoe option to buy an additional 825,000 shares. Syneron will be traded under the ticker ENOL.
Syneron's largest shareholder is chairman Dr. Shimon Eckhouse, with a 23.8% stake, through two private companies he owns. Eckhouse is expected to sell 100,000 shares for $1.5 million during the issue, reducing his stake in the company to 17.9%.
These proceeds are less than Eckhouse earned in his previous IPO on Wall Street - ESC Medical Systems, before it merged with Laser Industries to form Lumenis (Nasdaq:LUME.PK).
In late 1991, Eckhouse met Hillel Bachrach, who later became a cofounder ESC. The two men found investors for the company, including MedMax Ventures, which invested $500,000 in exchange for 500,000 ESC shares. ESC opened for business in 1992, and launched sales outside the US in the third quarter of 1994, after raising an additional $1.75 million from new investors.
ESC's path to an IPO began when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ESC products for marketing in the US in August 1995. ESC was already profitable, and the FDA approval supported the decision to go public.
ESC held its IPO at the end of January 1996, raising $54 million on Nasdaq at a company value of $150 million Eckhouse exploited the IPO to sell shares for $2.2 million. Six months later, when ESC was traded at a market cap of almost $400 million, ESC raised $94 million in a secondary issue. Eckhouse exploited the secondary issue to sell more shares for $7 million. Three months later, ESC raised $100 million in an issue of convertible bonds.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on July 15, 2004