Israeli company HeraMED successfully completed its IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). HeraMED has developed a small monitor for home use designed to track fetal heartbeats. The device, which is connected to a smartphone and the cloud, makes it possible to save and share the date with the attending physicians.
Netanya-based HeraMED raised A$6 million (NIS 16.2 million) in its offering at A$0.20 per share. The company's value for the IPO was set at A$17.5 million (NIS 47.3 million). Official trading in the share will start tomorrow. Adv. Anna Moshe from the Pearl Cohen Zedek Latser Baratz law firm and Lior Shahar, head of startup sector, technology & global cluster at BDO Israel, accompanied the offering.
CEO David Groberman, a biomedical engineer, and COO Tal Slonim founded HeraMED in 2011. Following completion of the IPO, each founder holds 9.1% of the company's shares. According to figures from the IVC research company, it has raised only $3.4 million since it was founded, and had $1.5 million in cash before the IPO.
According to HeraMED's IPO prospectus, the company plans to use the proceeds from the offering for R&D, marketing and sales, management and general expenses, and working capital. HeraMED also intends to repay a $205,000 loan to Meitar Hadassah, a company controlled by Groberman and Slonim.
HeraMED is aiming mostly at markets in Israel, the European Union, the US, and Australia. According to its prospectus, the company already has regulatory approval in the UK, Israel, and European countries, and has begun preparations for requesting marketing approval in the US. In Israel, HeraMED has a distribution agreement with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) under which Teva subsidiary Abic will be the exclusive distributor of the product in Israel. The agreement stipulates a minimum distribution of $140,000 for the devices in the first year.
Australian trend continuing
HeraMED began posting revenue in the first half of 2018, earning a total of $27,000; its net loss was $599,000 in this period and $788,000 in 2017.
HeraMED is joining a growing number of Israeli companies listed on the ASX. The trend began three years ago with the mergers of small Israeli companies with stock exchange shells in Australia, thereby raising money and going public. In the past 18 months, most Israeli companies registering for trading in Australia did so through IPOs, not stock exchange shell mergers. Two Israeli companies recently completed IPOs in Australia: Shekel Brainweight (ASX: SBW) from Kibbutz Beit Keshet, which develops and manufactures advanced weighing systems, raised A$10.2 million, and Security Matters (ASX: SMX), which developed technology for marking various products in order to verify that they were original and prevent fraud, raised A$6 million.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 11, 2018
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