The share of the Israeli edtech company Tremor Zinka this week, after it was reported on the British Sky website that the company received inquiries from a number of parties interested in purchasing it, and hired the investment bank Goldman Sachs to assist it in examining the issue.
On Wednesday morning, the company responded to the publication, and wrote that it confirms that it is in discussions with Goldman Sachs, which serves as the financial advisor, but is not currently in the process of selling. In response, its shares fell by 10% in London in the morning hours.
Tremor is traded at the same time in London and Nasdaq, and its market value is 446 million dollars. In any case, it seems that if there is indeed an interest in purchasing the company, its shareholders will be happy for a deal that will flood them with value after the stock fell by 73% in less than two years.
Tremor, formerly known as Merimedia and Taptica, provides solutions for digital advertising. The company has developed an automated and data-based trading platform for advertisers, with an emphasis on videos. It offers them a software platform designed for different types of media and devices such as smart TVs and mobile phones, and helps them plan, run and optimize campaigns in the various channels. Among the company’s clients are Amazon, Disney and Twitter.
Tremor’s CEO is Ofer Drucker, former founder and CEO of Metomi Shakra. Over the years Tremor has made several acquisitions. One of the most prominent of them was Amobi, which was founded by the entrepreneur Zohar Levkovitch and developed a digital platform to maximize advertising results; Tremor purchased it last summer from the telecom company Singtel for $239 million.
According to the publication in Sky, both financial entities and potential strategic buyers are interested in the purchase of Tremor. According to the publication, last year an American fund expressed interest in its purchase, then at a price of 9 pounds per share, while today it is trading at 2.63 pounds – but the uncertainty in the markets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the fund give up.
reached a peak value of 1.7 billion dollars
Tremor recently published the reports for 2022, a year in which it recorded a decrease of about 2% in revenues to $335 million, but revenues ex-AC (that is, excluding traffic acquisition expenses) increased by 3% to about $310 million.
Adjusted EBITDA (earnings excluding interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) amounted to $145 million, a 10% decrease compared to the previous year, and profit shrank by 69% to $22.7 million. At the end of the year, the company’s coffers had about 218 million dollars in cash and short-term investments.
With the release of the reports, Drucker said that macroeconomic uncertainty continues, and customers are increasingly pooling their budgets with trusted partners who have more advanced and complete technological solutions. He added that in his estimation Tremor has a comprehensive solution, and is in a good position to obtain a larger share of existing customer budgets, and to attract new customers.
Tremor was issued in London in 2014 at a value of $160 million after the money, and in 2021, the record year for technology stocks, it was also issued on Nasdaq. The company then raised $129 million at a price of $19 per share and at a value of approximately 1.4 billion dollar, and a short time later it reached a peak of about 23.5 dollars per share, which reflected a value of more than 1.7 billion dollars.
However, since then, like the vast majority of technology companies that issued that year, it has lost a significant percentage of its value. Today its share price now stands at 6.24 dollars and reflects the aforementioned company’s market value of only 446 million dollars.
If indeed at the end of the process Tremor is acquired at a value lower than its IPO value on Nasdaq, it will join two other technology companies from Israel that began trading in the US that year and were sold – Iron Source is merged in a share deal with Unity from the US at a value that is 74% lower than its value in 2021 , and Autonomo recently announced its sale, after losing 94% since it began trading.