Haim Shani and Moshe Lichtman's investment fund Israel Growth Partners (IGP) has invested in Herzliya-based software company Jacada (Nasdaq: JCDA). This week, IGP signed an agreement to buy 300,000 Jacada shares, 7% of the company's share capital, from Robert (Bob) Ashton's investment firm Kinetic Catalyst Partners, for a price of $4.5 per share (a total of $1.35 million). This price reflects a 36% premium on the share's $3.3 closing price yesterday on Wall Street.
Late into the trading day last week, Jacada's share price jumped 80% to $5.95, following another deal in which 740,000 shares (17.7% of the share capital) were sold at the same price. The buyer in this deal also appears to be IGP, and the seller might be the company’s largest shareholder, Lloyd Milller, who controls a 24% stake.
Jacada, managed by one of its founders, Gideon Hollander, provides software solutions for the optimization and acceleration of business processes, mainly for call centers. In the US, the company is traded over the counter at a market cap of $14 million, before the jump in share prices yesterday. In 2015, Jacada reported $17.3 revenue, a growth of 5.8% from 2014, but also a larger net loss, from $668,000 to $1.2 million.
Last year, Kinetic attempted an activist investment in Jacada, after claiming that the company's performance was low. The attempt failed, but Kinetic is now selling its stake, probably at a profit. Kinetic became an interested party in Jacada after buying shares in 2014-2015; since mid-2015, Kinetic acquired shares at an average price of $3.6 per share.
Haim Shani and Moshe Lichtman's IGP is a private equity fund founded in order to invest in Israeli technology firms. The fund focuses on companies with the potential of becoming world leaders in their fields of activity and seeks to cooperate with them in consolidating their technology and business model. Unlike other companies in which the fund has invested, which were private companies, Jacada is a traded company in the US. IGP's portfolio includes GreenRoad and ColorChip.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 5, 2016
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