Foresight Autonomous Holdings Ltd. (TASE: FRST), which develops systems for preventing accidents and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) software solutions for autonomous driving apps, has raised NIS 23.5 million with an offering of 17% of its shares.
Foresight is still at the "demonstration" stage, and is trailing behind Mobileye(NYSE: MBLY), the leading Israeli company in this sector, which today reported that was being acquired by Intel for $15 billion. Foresight lost NIS 47 million in the first nine months of 2016, leaving it with NIS 18 million in cash as of the end of September.
Foresight planned to raise NIS 20.6 million in its offering, but decided to increase the amount, following strong demand for its offering. The share price in the offering was NIS 1.90, 14% below the yesterday's closing price on the TASE. Participants in the offering also received an option for each share purchased with a strike price of $0.80 (NIS 2.92).
Reinforcing capital and R&D
Participants in the offering included Tzipora and Ariel Carasso from the Carasso family, which imports Nissan and Renault cars to Israel; Dr. Yoav Ben Dror, Omar Galin, and Eddie Shapiro, founders of successful algo-trading company Final; Retalix founder Brian Cooper; Ayalim Mutual Funds; Tachlit Indices; the Hatzavim hedge fund; and Adv. Shmuel Zysman.
Foresight said that the capital raised would help the company accelerate its R&D and commercialization of its main system. In addition, in view of the company's preparations for its entry into the US capital market, the financing round will help Foresight reinforce its equity for the purpose of meeting the threshold requirement for having its shares listed for trading in the US. The Foresight share price responded to the reports with a 7% jump in trading to NIS 2.36, raising the company's market cap to NIS 160 million.
Errorless detection of objects
Last month, Foresight launched its alpha version of its flagship product. The system launched is composed of a pair of video cameras installed on the front of a car designed to provide 3D vision capability and computer software installed in the car designed for processing and analysis using an advanced algorithm of the image obtained from the video cameras. Based on the analysis, the system detects road dangers and warns the driver of road accidents liable to occur as a result of the detected hazards.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on March 13, 2017
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