Trading opened this morning in shares of Tamar Petroleum at a loss of 4.5% for those who bought shares in the IPO. In contrast to the company's successful bond offering, the share offering generated low demand among foreign investors, even though a special book was opened for them. The investors in the shares are mainly Israeli institutions, which as mentioned are down 4.5% on the investment this morning.
A great deal of disinformation has circulated on the market in connection with the Tamar share offering. Unusually, and strangely, the company has not published the names of the firms that invested in the institutional stage of the offering. This means that people with pension funds, mutual funds, or other financial instruments, do not know if they were exposed to the offering or not.
The offering was supposed to be one of the largest ever on the local capital market. The company issued shares to the tune of $200 million, but demand form foreign investors amounted to $13 million only.
Capital market sources told "Globes" today that while the book was open, attempts were made to make Yitzhak Tshuva, who controls Delek Group Ltd. (TASE: DLEKG) from which Tamar Petroleum was a spin-off, to reduce the company valuation so as better to reflect the risk in the profitability of the Tamar gas reservoir, which is the company's asset - it owns 9.25% of it. Tshuva refused, and so, given the risks of over-exposure to the reservoir (the institutions are exposed to it both through Tamar Petroleum's bonds and through Isramco Ltd. (Nasdaq: ISRL; TASE: ISRA.L), foreign investors shunned the offering.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 24, 2017
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