18, 1999 Sun-Thu at 18:00 (GMT+2)
High Tech News
Jacada Raises $50 Mln at $186 Mln Value
By Eliav Alalof
Just twenty four hours before Wall Street started to slide,
Jacada managed to join the expanding club of Israeli
companies traded on US markets. The company, located in
the Herzliya Pituah industrial zone, raised $49.5 million on
Thursday at a value of $186 million. The issue price of $11
per share was in the middle of the projected range. The
IPO was led by US investment bank Lehman Brothers, with
Oppenheimer and SG Cowen as co-managers. On Friday,
the first day of trading in the share, it closed unchanged, on
a volume of eighth million shares.
The company?s shareholders include Gidon Hollander, joint
founder and general manager, who and his brother Yossi
Hollander, formerly one of the owners of New Dimension,
sold to US software house BMC.
The company was founded in 1990, and was formerly
known as CST. It has developed a software system that
upgrades organizational computer systems (mainframe or
AS 400) in large corporations. Such systems have many
terminals connected to a central computer.
This configuration has several limitations, among other
things the obsolete terminals, usually with green and black
screens, and the inability to access the Internet. Jacada?s
software makes it possible to upgrade the terminals to color
screens, and facilitates Internet access. It represents a quick,
cheap, low risk alternative to installing a new computer
system.
Jacada has demonstrated impressive sales growth. It sells
software to Mitsubishi, Boeing, Toyota, Lockheed Martin,
among others. In the first half of 1999, its sales totaled $6.3
million, compared with $4 million in the corresponding
period in 1998. Its 1998b revenue was $9.5 million,
compared with $5.6 million in 1997. Jacada made a net
loss of $2.9 million in 1998, but is expected to end 1999 on
a small profit.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 17 October, 1999 |
