The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange opened this morning to an unusual sight. The stock with the sharpest fall was NextVision Stabilized Systems, developer and producer of stabilized cameras for drones and other platforms, headed by its co-founder Chen Golan. Fidelity sold off two thirds of its holding in the company through Goldman Sachs and IBI Investment House (as the local broker).
On a huge turnover of NIS 175 million, eight times the daily average over the past year, NextVision’s share price fell by 12% at the opening, wiping NIS 2.5 billion from its market cap. Nevertheless, anyone who invested in the company three years ago has still made a return of over 840%. The fall has since moderated to less than 9%.
Has Fidelity, an investment giant with over $7 trillion under management, spotted that NextVision’s period of high growth is behind it? Talking to "Globes", Omri Efroni, defense analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., cautiously estimates that the sale is a matter of profit taking.
"I calculate that Fidelity made twice its investment in NextVision, and so I believe that they are taking their profits home," Efroni said. "It’s a matter of managing their portfolio correctly. Fidelity has gone down from a 10% holding in NextVision to 3.5%, below the insider threshold. They’re managing their risks; it’s not something that has changed in the company itself."
Efroni doesn’t cover NextVision directly, but he does monitor its published figures and he takes part in its conference calls for investors. "This year, NextVision’s revenue should grow by 110%. These are still crazy numbers. Gross profit is meant to rise to 70%. The company is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at a multiple of 28, which is not very high. The market does not see its growth rate slowing."
The Tel Aviv Defense Index, which is fairly new (it began less than a year ago in November 2025), is down 3% today and has fallen by 20% so far this year. Has the dream around the defense stocks evaporated? Efroni says that the fall in defense stocks is a global trend, the effect of profit taking after a great deal of hot money flowed to the sector. "A lot of money crowded into one place, and we see that all the multiples of the defense companies have fallen by about 30% on average. We see this in the stocks of the European companies as well, but in Israel it was a little stronger. For example, Elbit Systems’ share price is down 30% from its peak. All the same, there are semi-defense companies like SpaceX, which has risen a long way since its flotation."
"A negative event whatever way you look at it"
Another capital market source says that the sale of shares by Fidelity is a negative event for NextVision, even if the explanation proves correct that the company and other players offered, namely that it was a matter of a technical sale that the fund had to carry out, unconnected to the value of the company or its business. "Whatever way you look at it, it’s a negative event," he said. "In the end, a very smart entity decides to sell, whatever the reasons may be, and certainly with this timing, before a very strong quarter and the expectation of large orders."
Nevertheless, he points to one positive point. "The only positive aspect of this that I can see is that the discount was not large. An entity that sells to the tune of nearly NIS 1.3 billion and the discount is only 7% - that’s a positive sign." According to his information, about NIS 1 billion worth of shares were bought by foreign investors and NIS 300 million by a local financial institution. It is not yet known whether this is a new investor in the stock or an existing investor increasing its position.
The main question now, he says, is the identity of the buyers. "Are they flippers who have gone into the stock for a short time and will then generate large supply of the shares, which could be bad, or large institutions that see something for the long term." He estimates that the number of buyers was small. "I don’t think that it’s a matter of dozens of entities. I assume that we’ll know very soon, if not from reports then from rumors."
He says that the long-term significance depends on the reasons for the sale. "If it’s a macro or technical event, in which the fund was obliged to cut companies below a certain value, or a decision to reduce exposure to Israel, then it’s bad, but it doesn’t say anything about the company’s forecasts, and it can recover." According to this market player, it may be that Fidelity sold off its entire holding in the company and not just two-thirds of it, and that some of the shares were sold previously. The company can be expected to report on that in due course.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 6, 2026.
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