Samy Katsav to float defense group at NIS 1.5b valuation

A little over four years since his previous attempt to float Naska Industries, which holds his arms and defense businesses, Samy Katsav is trying again. Sources inform “Globes” that the company is preparing an offering in the hundreds of millions of shekels on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, at a valuation of some NIS 1.5 billion.

In late 2017, Katsav embarked on an offering to raise NIS 500 million for Naska Industries at a valuation estimated at the time of NIS 2 billion, but in the end decided to forego the move. Now, as mentioned, he is re-examining the matter, and among other things has arranged meetings with financial institutions to present the company’s business. Poalim IBI is expected to lead the offering.

Naska Industries is the defense arm of Samy Katsav’s SK Group, which was founded in 2004 and which holds several private companies, and a 20% stake in Israel Shipyards, worth some NIS 400 million at the current share price, which is not part of the company being floated. The defense companies in the group employ about 1,000 people in Israel and overseas.

Among Naska Industries’ main holdings are small arms company Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), which has factories in the US and India; Meprolight, which develops, produces and sells electro-optic and optical systems, thermal gunsights, laser ranging devices, night-vision devices, and other electro-optic devices; Camero-Tech, which deals in radar systems, including systems for seeing through walls; and Uni-Scope Optical Systems, which designs and produces periscopes and other vision systems.

Katsav (76), who has been in the defense business for over 50 years, is chairperson, director, or executive manager in each of the group’s companies, and he is personally involved in running and financing them.

The core of Naska Industries’ business is IWI, formerly the light arms division of Israel Military Industries, which was acquired in 2005. Since then, steps have been taken to rehabilitate the company through structural and management changes that included investment of NIS 150 million in upgrading the production infrastructure, expanding markets, and broadening the product offering. The group thus succeeded in substantially growing the company’s sales and profits. IWI alone now employs over 500 people, which compares with 100 at the time that the company was privatized.

Among IWI’s products are the Galil and Tavor rifles, the Negev machine gun, the Uzi sub-machine gun, and the Jericho and Desert Eagle handguns.

In the early 2000s, Katsav bought Meprolight from Kibbutz Maayan Zvi. At the time, the company employed seventeen people; it now employs 250. Its optics products serve the IDF and are sold in more than 45 other countries.

In the past two decades, the group has acquired several other companies synergetic with its business.

Besides product sales, companies in the group also set up factories overseas and transfer know-how to foreign government agencies, under licenses from the Israeli authorities.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on February 28, 2022.

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