Discount Investment sells control of Elron Ventures

Israeli holding company Discount Investment Company Limited (level:completelyThe Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) has notified that it has signed an agreement to sell its 59.1% stake in its technology investment arm Elron Projects (TASE: ELRN) for $53.2 million. The sale was to a relatively unknown family office called Ariel EL for a $90 million valuation of Elron, which is 50% above its market cap.

Elron Ventures, a veteran Israeli tech incubator founded in the 1960s and going public in 1975, invests in early-stage medical device, cybersecurity and software companies. Companies Elron has developed include Elbit Systems, Orbotech, Given Imaging, Netvision and Elscint. In a recent company presentation, Elron said it had been involved in 14 exits worth $1.8 billion since 2010, of which it held a stake of $660 million.

Elron, currently run by CEO Yaron Elad, has a market capitalization of NIS 222 million, up 16% over the past year, although it has lost 33% of its value over the past three years. The company manages investments worth NIS 300 million, well above its market value.

“The families we manage trust us to create wealth for them that will last for generations to come,” Ariel EL Managing Partner Lesia Bahar Manoah told Globes. “We have offices in the US, UK and Israel. We connect our investments to the network of investments we have built around the world, and the goal of investing in Elron is to provide families (who invest in the family office) with unique access to the high-tech space.”

Bahar Manoah has a background in mechanical engineering. She says she lived in Austria, Germany and other countries for more than a decade before entering the world of investments, including venture capital buyouts.

What led you to Elron?

“Elron is a name we trust. They have investments in a variety of tech startups, and they have stakes in cybersecurity. That’s one area we wanted to invest in: cybersecurity resilience and business continuity. Elron has a portfolio of 19 different companies, from cybersecurity to healthcare, data protection and more.

“We are focused on supporting and maintaining Elron’s portfolio companies. There are companies that we will need to strengthen and provide more support to, some of them growth companies. We will also look for new investments in the areas of business continuity, supply chain security and others. I have full confidence in Elron’s management, and in its partnership with Rafael (through the RDC joint venture established in the early 1990s, to market military technologies developed by Rafael for civilian uses),” she said.

Ariel El declines to provide details about the prominent investors or reveal the size of the assets they manage. “It’s a very secretive business and I can’t reveal names,” says Bahar Manoah. “But these families believe in the high-tech space and want to invest in it.”

This article was published in Globes, Israeli Business News – en.globes.co.il – on July 22, 2024.

© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.