Nacht sold Check Point shares worth $540m in 2017

Marius Nacht, photo: Tamar Matsafi

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It is believed that CEO Gil Shwed, whose holdings will be published soon, has increased his stake in the company.

Cyber security company Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) cofounder and chair Marius Nacht continued the sale of his shares in the company in 2017. After selling shares for over $800 million in 2016, reducing his stake in the company to 6.8%, he sold five million more shares in 2017, cutting his Check Point holdings to only 3.9%. During the period in which Nacht sold these shares, Check Point's share price averaged $108, making his estimated proceeds from the sales $540 million. According to a report to the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday, Nacht held 6.2 million Check Point shares as of the end of 2017, representing a current market value of $632 million.

Publication of the holdings of Check Point cofounder and CEO Gil Shwed is expected in the coming days. According to the most recent report from a year ago, Shwed had 17.9% of Check Point's share capital, amounting to 3.5 million shares, the current value of which is $3.1 billion. Shwed's holding in the company's shares has remained stable, and has even increased in recent years, making him the company's largest shareholder.

$16.6 billion market cap

Shwed and Nacht founded Check Point together with Shlomo Kramer, who later left the company and founded or invested in many other cyber companies, including HyperWise and Lacoon, sold to Check Point in 2015 for $180 million, and Imperva Inc. (NYSE: IMPV), his holdings in which he recently sold for $90 million. Check Point's share price climbed 22.7% in 2017, and at one point, Check Point became the Israeli company with the largest market cap, following the steep drop in the share price of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) (the recent recovery in Teva's share price pushed the company's market cap back above that of Check Point. Check Point's current market cap is $16.6 billion. The company's revenue grew 6.5% to $1.85 billion in 2017, and its non-GAAP net profit was up 8.5% to $888 million.

Active investor in medical companies

In addition to Nacht's job as Check Point chairperson, he is been active in recent years mainly as an investor in life sciences companies. Nacht founded the aMoon Partners fund, whose portfolio includes CartiHeal, which is development technology to rejuvenate cartilage and bone tissue; Mapi Pharma, which is developing a generic version of Teva's Copaxone drug administered to patients once a month; Ayala Pharmaceuticals, which is developing personalized cancer drugs; and other companies.